Enthrallment

There had once been a time when he'd actually liked Diane quite a lot and could appreciate the beauty in her straightforwardness. After the manye years spent with Lorena, and then those he'd spent alone, it was refreshing to be with another woman so upfront and so very sure of what she wanted. Refreshing and rather liberating...

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They'd met outside of a dimly lit train station while in pursuit of the same couple; a sweet faced girl with gorgeous, straight, waist length blonde hair (which set her apart from the majority of the women of 1937 who were sporting shorter styles with waves) and a handsome young man; both in their early twenties and from the looks of their clothes, fresh off a farm. The pair had been walking back and forth for some time now, looking down at a well worn piece of paper the woman clutched desperately.

Bill approached them first, sending the woman that was silently watching the couple, unseen from the shadows, a warning glance. Whoever the female vampire was, he could tell that she was recently turned because she hadn't quite dropped the useless semblance of breathing yet-a common mistake among very young vampires. The last thing he needed at that point in time when his luck had been so very bad would be for some newly turned fool to make a mess of a situation that would require finesse.

"Welcome to New Orleans," he greeted, adopting a smile that would appear friendly and nonthreatening to the humans. "A friend and I just happened to come by here for the departure schedule for next week and I saw you two standing here. You appear to be in some kind of trouble. May I point you in the right direction or provide you with some other manner of assistance?"

The doe eyed woman had jumped, startled at his approach-Bill could hear her pulse racing; it'd been so long since he'd let himself feed that it took every ounce of his willpower to resist draining her then, witnesses and consequences be damned. Patience Bill, he told himself, retracting his fangs behind his tightly closed mouth.

"Oh! Why yes, we sure could use your help mister. I'm Mrs. Tisha Barlowe and this is my husband Peter. We just got here from Kansas. Peter's father was s'posed to meet us here at the station hours ago but he hasn't showed up. Could you maybe give us a ride to his place? We don't have money but we'd sure appreciate it, wouldn't we Peter?"

Her husband only nodded mutely. He was terrified of the too pale man who'd managed to approach them seemingly from nowhere and all too conveniently.

Bill could smell his fear as plain as day and damned if it didn't give a hard on-he couldn't help it, it took him back to his time with Lorena where they both derived pleasure from frightening their victims. He surreptitiously adjusted while managing to keep his facial features controlled. "It'd be my pleasure. Please, follow me and my friend to my car." He gestured toward where he knew the female vampire was waiting, having decided that he would share.

"Friend?" Tisha echoed as she and her husband turned as one to look in that direction.

A woman stepped out of the shadows and into the pale yellow light provided by the dim bulb overhead. She smiled at Peter first and the young man flushed scarlet as she sashayed in their direction, her long green silk dress rustling in the silence following her entrance. "That would be me. The name's Diane."

She turned her gaze to Bill and he felt the full intensity of the glamour she was working on the unfortunate Peter. The woman crossed her arms beneath her chest causing her breasts to peek enticingly over the plunging V-neck of her gown. His fangs descended but fortunately the two humans were too enthralled by the dark skinned beauty for the moment.

Diane laughed softly as his eyes bored into hers and then returned her attention to the two humans. "Come on then you two. Let's get you to Daddy Barlowe's before the Big Bad Wolf takes a bite out of you," she told them in an airy, teasing voice.

Tisha shuddered. There was something predatory in the way Diane walked and how she was eyeing them both that unnerved her. "I-I don't know. Peter?"

Her husband didn't answer her nor could he have if he wanted to since he was fully under Diane's thrall at that point, his blue eyes slightly glazed over and never leaving hers as she tucked his arm in the crook of her own with a satisfied little smile on her face.

Sensing Bill stir behind her, Mrs. Barlowe went from being unnerved to being terrified. She spun to face the well mannered Southern gentleman who suddenly appeared just as scary as Diane if not more so, her eyes wide and as panicked as any animal that suddenly realizes it's surrounded by beings above it in the food chain. "O-on second thought, I-I-I think we'll just..." her stuttered attempt to plea for her life trailed off as she was glamoured just as her husband had been,

"Took you long enough. What's your name anyway?"

"It's Bill," he replied automatically, sparing her a quick glance. "Did you kill the man they were talking about?"

She only laughed in reply, walking past him with Peter trotting obediently at her side. "What does it matter to you Bill? You in the habit of empathizing with dinner?"

The conversation was beginning to remind him of a similar one with Lorena. "We don't have to kill them to feed from them."

Diane paused and turned to face him, her expression incredulous. "And what's the fun in that?"

"No one said being a...what we are is supposed to be fun."

Her red tinted lips turned up into a smile as she closed the distance between them once again, her hips swaying seductively. "And no one said we're supposed to spend an eternity indulging in self loathing and denial neither Bill. I saw you earlier; you want a taste of these two as bad as I do. This so-called life isn't about pitying the weak. It's about survival of the fittest Bill and these two..." she laughed suddenly, gliding her fingers up Bill's chest, her fangs descending as her eyes locked on his. "These two aren't fit to be anything but appetizers," she whispered.

Bill was never sure of what it was exactly that swayed him; whether it was the fact that yet another of his kind was telling him that pitying humans was wrong, the still lingering heady scent of Tisha's fear, or maybe it was the fact that he hadn't fed for nearly a week and he was so tired of hating what he was, but either way, he succumbed to her words, using his preternatural speed to pull her body against his own.

Diane nearly purred at his hardness and her nails raked down his chest and her fingers moved to the front of his breeches.

"Wait," he managed before losing control completely. "We need to take care of these two first before the thrall wears off."

She smiled, taking a step back from him reluctantly. "Of course. There's a spot we can do this that's about a mile away. Follow me."

With that, she grabbed the still enthralled Peter and sped off into the darkness, Bill and Tisha not far behind, until they came to an isolated wooded area.

It was at about at this point that the night's events became a little fuzzy in Bill's normally impeccable memory. What he did remember of the night was more a disjointed series of vignettes than an actual recollection.

Bill remembered the gleeful look on Diane's face as she killed Peter Barlowe, severing his jugular so that his blood sprayed from the wound like water from a hydrant, soaking through the silk dress and drenching her body with blood.

He could remember her standing fearlessly naked before him with her hands on her hips, the moon at her back like some sort of demonic hunting goddess. He hadn't been able to keep his hands off of her after that.

What he recalled next was Tisha coming out of the thrall-sometime between Diane tearing his shirt from his body and his calloused fingers rubbed her clit until she climaxed, screaming his name incoherently. The blonde woman had stumbled backward over the body of her husband and she opened her mouth to scream, her face horrified. He'd quickly broken her neck, not allowing himself guilt, instead rejoicing in being what he was.

Later that night, he could remember drinking from Tisha's femoral artery while Diane sat on the dead girl's chest and drank from her wrist, her eyes closed in bliss because the blood of an innocent was like a dangerous combination between ecstasy and Viagra for their kind.

Bill then had very vivid snapshots of the two of them fucking repeatedly on the ground, against a tree, within less than a foot from the dead Barlowes, covered in their blood and not giving a damn.

Lastly, he remembered spreading her legs with his bloodied hands and then painstakingly licking the blood from her skin until she first demanded and then begged him to take her. Once he'd finally entered her, he'd claimed her as his, and brought them both to shuddering orgasm, she'd held his head to her chest, her eyes full of wonder and something else-some emotion he didn't recognize until he met a psychic waitress many years later- he'd seen in Lorena's eyes so many years ago.

They'd been a team for a few years before he found himself questioning the needless killing of humans again and then he'd left Diane in Baton Rouge to see other parts of the world and to seek to change away from her powers of enthrallment.

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And so, while there was once a time before his decision to not play with his food, so to speak, where he'd liked Diane and what she represented so much that he'd claimed her as his, as he watched her and the others give Sookie-aka his new lease on his undead "life"- the once over, Bill decided right now was definitely not one of those times.

                                                        Fin