It all makes sense.
Not the vampiric feast now taking place before us, nor the sudden blossoming warmth in my core and my loins, not even the shocked gasps and backward steps that everyone on my team performs like rote clockwork.
No, the Twins make sense.
They never worked apart, were never seen apart. It might have been part of their public image; there was a certain corporate component to keeping a world order intact, but even then their endless contact would grow old quickly. But now that their talent--or horrifying debilitating difference--had been explained, it made perfect sense as to why they'd have to stay together. Imagine being connected to someone else's nerves, and suddenly feeling pain, or an unexplained touch. It would drive them mad.
Madness seems to be a common theme in my line of work.
So it's only fitting that as the woman in red sinks her brilliant ivory incisors into the supple flesh of her obedient thrall, both women would howl in a pleasured, agonized, tormented tenor that sent them into the deepest recesses of their brains. Four eyes rolled into the backs of their skulls, two mouths hung open, and on Mindy's chest, two small rivulets of dark maroon blood descended from the wounds the woman in red had inflicted.
I watch as Mindy turns ever so slightly paler, the dark pumping life essence in her veins going to another, feeding another, satiating another. Joanna trembles and bucks and shakes as if she were being fed on herself.
My heart pumps blood in my ears. It's being called.
Summoned.
A rushing warmth swirls through me. It's not about what I want anymore.
The woman in red looks at me.
Her hunger smiles at me.
I strangle my gasp, relief and repugnance all building upon each other. This is but the first part of her feast.
It's telling that no one has made a move to stop the woman in red. Penny looks dismayed, covering her face with one enormous hand and peeking through the cracks in her fingers. Elogia is looking at her strange device, trying so hard to detach from the scene, and failing so very deliciously. Listener is shuddering as thoughts and feelings more powerful than she can blot out roll over her brain, and turn it to their amplification.
Thundress simply watches. She is the rapt student she had often wanted me to be.
But now we all had a new teacher.
Finally. Finally they knew the burning of loins, the craving for flesh, the yearning for a feast. Blood. Sin. It didn't matter. Here was salvation before me.
And salvation wears red.
At last the woman in red emerges from her drink with a slick-toothed gasp of roiling satisfaction. She grins widely, a predator baring her feasting fangs. Her face is drenched in Mindy's blood, but Mindy still wobbles, as if the woman in red was ensuring that she remained just sanguine enough to keep conscious. She wanted Mindy to feel her draining. Mindy smiles dreamily, the smile of satisfying one you loved.
I don't need to beg the Flight for that anymore, beg for that kind of warm acceptance, or a place to call my own. It was here. It was with the woman in red.
But the price was so impossibly high.
"Ngha..." hisses the woman in red, the vampiric owner of the scene. "Mindy, you are so very tender today".
"Thank you Goddess", says Mindy, her voice still strong despite her rocking, blood-loss induced stupor.
"Did you enjoy it?" the woman in red asks, now walking around the drained girl like an owner inspecting property. I hope she doesn't notice my knees working together.
"Yes, Goddess".
"Do you think Joanna enjoyed it as much?"
Here Mindy smiled, and I did too. "I know she did, Goddess."
Suddenly, the woman in red yanked Mindy's head back. Strength no one should have possessed short of Penny nearly tore the thrall's sinew, but her trust in her better was utter.
"You mentioned feedback when I was educating you", said the woman in red slowly. "How you should not touch one another because it would result in a looping intensification of the sensation that you might not be able to break".
Mindy's eyes widened in dismay, the desperation of her plight now suddenly revealed.
"Yes, Goddess! We must never touch one another. It could break us. Kill us!"
"And that would be such a shame while you still have use to me", said the woman in red in mockingly sympathetic tones. "It couldn't be permitted while you were of value to me".
Mindy's face suddenly fell. "...were... Goddess...?"
"Now that I have five of your colleagues, I can educate them to my needs so much more simply than if I had to ensnare them one at a time." The woman in red smiled beautifically, and Mindy lost herself in it. Such trust. Such kind surrender.
The woman in red licked her teeth.
She moved suddenly, boring her scarlet eyes into Mindy's, and pressing into a softness of the mind that only she could find.
"You are going to die for me", informed the woman in red.
Mindy gasped, eyes wide and unseeing, and yet filled with understanding. A wave, invisible and incontrovertible, flowers through the cavern, touching every wall of stone, every thread of silk costume, every sensitive, bristling bit of skin. I feel sorrow for Mindy, but only for an instant. If there was even a sliver of hope to save her, to give her some inkling of a future as herself, all five of us, I'm sure, would move. All of the Flight would leap into action, scalding and shocking and crushing.
But there is no hope. None. The woman in red has spoken.
Her words are fate.
"You will go to your twin", says the woman in red. She looms over her thrall. Nothing and no one has ever looked so utterly quelled as Mindy is at this moment. And yet, fear and terror cannot hide the revelation blossoming in her very soul. It could kill her, and she will still follow where her soul beckons, because she is fated to.
The woman in red has spoken.
"You will give her permanence, and bliss", says the woman in red, hissing the last words. Mindy straightens and delights, truth finally revealed to her.
"And she", continues the woman in red, "will give it back to you."
Beside her, bound and shackled and dripping wetness like a slow, insistent leak, Joanna moans and quivers. Her fate delivered through Mindy's eyes, and Mindy's heart, and Mindy's loins...
I kneel. My heart is pounding. It hurts. I don't care. The woman in red sees me. Understands me. Knows what I've always longed to witness, and never dared to share. She's taken it from me. It was never mine. It can't ever be mine. It's hers. It's always and forever been hers, and I am only entranced with the joy that I have something to give this divine, holy avatar of perfection...
I need this.
Mindy and Joanna need this.
The woman in red doesn't.
She doesn't need anything. Not Mindy, or Joanna, or me. Not even obedience. But she wants it.
And she will have it.
My hand slips into my pants on its own accord, the sweat of my magma core broiling my thighs, my lips, my clit, like a flame that need never die so long as my fingers swirl and swirl, like the heat of the day, like the storm the woman in red orchestrates.
Beside me, Listener collapses to her knees. But she is not happy. I turn to her for a moment, muscle memory enforcing a satiation of curiosity I no longer have. She's in pain. Her glasses have fallen, and her brilliant blue eyes are pleading. She doubles over, trying to resist something.
I hope she doesn't resist for too long. My eyes return to fate.
Mindy is padding towards Jonna, bare feet soundless and waifish upon the marble-like floor. Their eyes are fixed upon one another, and I can see their recognition. The recognition of themselves, dancing like flames in orbs that now only see the woman in red's truth.
They musn't touch.
Mindy caresses Jonna's face.
There is no sound, but eyes flutter, breathing stifles, sensation rips through them as they twitch and shudder. My wetness consumes me. I don't want a swirl. I want more. Deeper. Further. In me. Within me. The temple that is my body serves a new force now. I slide two fingers easily, slowly, into my snatch, the warmth ever hotter, the glow in my core molten.
The woman in red moans contentedly, controllingly. She's amused. But her smile loses its kindness quickly.
