CHAPTER 1
The man was shabby but determined. He looked like a punter: a man ready to pay for sex. The way he hurried past the younger prettier whores suggested he did not have much money. The older ones came away from the wall enticingly.
He spoke with one and the conversation ended in a slap. Another shook her head. Looking around desperately, he saw one in the shadows. She had a short red skirt and a red wig, but her face was not clear. As he got closer, he looked and hesitated. She must be in her sixties at least.
He asked her, and she replied. He shook his head. She asked him. His reply was obviously not to her liking, but she shrugged and took his hand. His shoulders slumped, but they went into the alley.
About ten minutes later another woman came out of the alley. Maybe forty, but well preserved. Blonde and in a short blue skirt. She went off briskly.
Both women were me.
The punter was lying dead with his throat cut, and I felt much better. In a few hours I would be myself again.
It had been a long time since I had drunk blood, so it had been wonderful to drink my fill. I had aged more than ever before, and had grown weak, so it was hard to restrain him. It has to be a living human -- we don't know why. Don't think we haven't tried animal blood, or tried to store it. Nothing else works but the blood of the still living.
So I couldn't kill him outright.
A knee to the balls, to get him down, then the first cut to the throat. After the first gulp I felt a little stronger, but he nearly threw me off before I got enough power to master him. When he was unconscious but still alive, I was able to take all I could before finishing the job with my little knife, to make it look like a frenzied attack rather than the careful bleeding it was. I took his wallet and phone to make it look like robbery, of course, but threw them both in the river after taking the few notes. I have had plenty of practice, so got almost no blood on my clothes. I used the red wig as a part shield and left it in the alley.
I may be a vampire, but I don't bite.
Too likely to get mentioned in the press, and the last thing I want is to draw attention. And if you bite you risk converting them. The Count taught me that. Having new vampires running around would also draw attention. He was very careful to enslave or convert only when he wanted. We acolytes just needed to drink blood.
I had been standing on that street for ten nights, feeling weaker every time and getting more and more scared. Times were hard, and more desperate women were out. A few more nights and no-one would have wanted to fuck me, and I would have been unable to take blood by force.
I had already made a couple of friends amongst the oldest ones, lying (like them) about my past. If I had not had my punter, I would have had to take one of them in the alley and hope I could manage a sudden slash with my knife to get enough to rescue me. Not fair, but my survival was above all.
According to Dr Van Helsing, when someone becomes a vampire, they lose their soul, and thus all morals. We have no regard for anyone but ourselves, going through our undead existence only in search of our own satisfaction. What today they would call a psychopath. We are simply incapable of feelings like love or affection. He said we are not even evil, just not caring about the death and pain we cause. I am not so sure. I think I have a little feeling. I am sorry sometimes. Not much, but a little, though it does not stop me. I don't know if the Count survives, but I think he was or is evil.
Thinking about it now, I had been quite selective about my victims, maybe not consciously. Few women and never a mother with children. The greatest number had been robbers and rapists, attacking a defenceless looking girl. At least three were murderers. One was a man who married for money then murdered his wife. It was assumed her family had cut his throat.
There were also old men living alone, wife and children dead. They often knew what I was and were grateful. Not wishing to live, but believing that suicide was a sin, they had time with a pleasant young woman, reminiscing, before giving up their life gratefully. It was always a cut, not a bite, and I promised I would not convert them.
Now, with luck I could manage for up to six months, though I would be trying for blood after three months when I could still behave normally. After that the aging would begin, and the blood lust start to rise. By morning I looked like the nineteen-year-old I was when the Count converted me.
I moved to another city and found a job serving in a bar. I've had a lot of practice in those sorts of jobs. I use my sexual attractiveness, but I never have sex. I cannot get pregnant and I can't catch disease, but I don't want it. Perhaps it would remind me that I am undead. Sex is for life, so is not for me.
But I feel alive in a different way. I relish the sexual power I have over men, knowing that their hopes will never be fulfilled. I act like a weak woman, but I am physically stronger than any of them. I like women but am sorry for their short burdensome lives. They are pleasant to me but there is always something holding them back from me, possibly an unconscious fear. They can perhaps sense something that men do not, or perhaps they are less distracted by my apparent youth and sexuality to see the darkness inside. I still drink from them, sometimes, but only from those who want death or deserve it. Mostly.
Or from the less deserving when my need is desperate, as it might have been that night. I was sorry for the man. I would have been more sorry for the whore. But I would still have done it.
And drinking the blood -- I need it to live, but it is also what I live for, that wonderful feeling when the life force comes into me, as it leaves my victim.
CHAPTER 2
It had been different in the old days with the Count. We had willing blood donors then. That is how he had converted me, coming each night for a little sip. He had such power, and the feeling was better than sex, so much better! A thousand times better. I had not had sex since that time.
I grew weaker and paler, and my parents were worried. Then I suddenly looked and felt better. That is when the vampirism had taken hold. I helped him take my sister, and we shared her blood each night. Later we travelled with him, inveigling young men hoping for sex with us. Mostly we feasted and the men died that day or in a few days. Occasionally he converted one.
A bite is not necessary, but I think it is how the disease (if that is what it is) is transferred. We can drink from an open wound made with a sharp knife, and someone who is bled does not become a vampire. The count knew when he wanted to make another one, and would make sure his saliva went into the wound. I think the saliva also had something to do with the ecstatic feeling that I and my sister had had. Once we had been converted, it was much less and our blood was no use to him, but he sucked us occasionally to keep us satisfied. I had not had that feeling for fifty years, unfortunately.
When things were going well, we had a big house with an estate and many loyal servants, each of whom was bled regularly, but not enough to make them too weak. (Plus the occasional lone traveller we killed, of course.) He was a real Count, though when we first met him, he was pretending to be his own great-great-grandson.
We do not live on blood; it is just a sort of regular medication we need. We eat and drink and breathe. It is true we do not like bright sunshine. Our eyes are much more sensitive and we can see in dim light much better than mortals, which gives us an advantage of course when hunting at night. Our hearing is also much more sensitive.
Crosses mean nothing to us.
But garlic. That is a problem. It is not poison: it is just repulsive to our sensitive noses, like the stuff they put in meths to stop people drinking it. How many men have unknowingly saved their lives by what they ate before a date with me!
The Count had decided to travel with my sister to England as husband and wife. He did not love us, but despite what Van Helsing said, I think there was some feeling, so he did not entirely abandon me. We were just his devoted slaves, of course. We had to obey him; which in my case meant staying behind because he told me.
He left me in the Crimea where a war had just begun, and I discovered my profession. I was introduced to a strange young woman called Florence Nightingale, who had started a hospital with volunteer nurses from England. As the Count had realised, every day there were bleeding men, and it was not hard for me to take a sip while dealing with them, staunching the flow. Some were hopeless, so at least got a kiss from a pretty nurse before they went unconscious. I drew the screens around and took a good drink. But at the same time, I became a good nurse. I was fortunate in having no fear of infection which killed many of the men, but we tried our best to maintain hygiene. Apparently Miss Nightingale's obsession with cleanliness was quite unusual in medicine.
She reminded me of Van Helsing in the power of her intellect, though I was afraid she might discover my secret. Fortunately, she was busy and convinced of the power of science. I wore a cross, which might have helped.
My English was limited, but there were also injured Russians, as Miss Nightingale took both equally, and I was useful to help with them. One of them, a chaplain, recognised what I was and begged me to kill him rather than make him a vampire. As he was unlikely to survive, I gave him his wish.
The Count was clever, and had done his best for me. When I later heard about Jack the Ripper in London, I guessed he was covering up the blood-letting by mutilation. I met him again about eighty years later, and he told me that their feeding had led to stories of a vampire, so I he thought of mutilation as a distraction. However, they mainly fed near the river, where they could dispose of the bodies of people who would not be missed. He had two new female slaves and a manservant. I never found out what happened to my sister. Then he was off again.
