Enthralled

A dangerously dark novella that will only ever be published on this store, Enthralled is a frightfully risky tale of a vampire coven following newly sired vampire fledge, Axten, as he learns to navigate the horrific unlife he's sold everything to claim. They stalk the night, and they absolutely do not glitter.

Slipping through the shadows, Axton followed his Dam. Keeping pace with the flash of scarlet sewn into the lining of her woolen cloak. Fitting, that. The hint of macabre tucked all neat and tidy within a lady’s garment. Modest, with a dash of the obscene.
It’s what’d drawn him in, wasn’t it? That look of other in her lifeless, gleaming eyes. A whisper of something deeper and darker than his pathetic human sensibilities could ever hope to understand. A whispered call summoning him to the dark.
Oh, he’d gone alright.
Calf to the market, just needing to be trimmed of summer’s fat.
And with a little snip, snip, she’d dressed him just how she liked. Expert with blade and tooth, his dark queen. His mistress. His dearest love. Sucked the humanity right from his veins, she had. Not letting a single precious drop go to waste, either. Even held him when he’d cried for his mummy, hushing and cooing until the tears dried up and the carcass went stiff.
That he’d signed the pact and sealed it with his soul didn’t seem to matter then.
It’d been so cold… so much pain…
Those had been the last memories of the man he’d been. The pathetic sop mooning after the pretty ladies in their tight, modest bindings. Spending his coin at whichever bawdy house was closest. He’d never bothered to take care of the paid ladies, back then. Never bothered to fill their veins with pleasure and their lungs with breathy, grateful sighs before he’d spent his man’s coin.
His Dam had taught him that neat trick when he’d next opened his eyes as something other. Set his head between her thighs and hadn’t let him breathe or rise again until she’d had her pleasure. Until her thighs had tightened about his ears and her heels had bruised his ribs. His spine.
If his efforts were deemed successful, she’d even feed him a sip of that pleasure—straight from the vein.
The one high on her thigh, running thick as syrup after she’d had her fill.
Hadn’t needed to empty his coin purse after that. Truly might never have tried, if his Dam hadn’t grown bored of his tongue and teeth and hands.
She’d taken him to the streets then, his beautiful mistress. Taught him the art of the hunt, and all that went with it.
It’d been a wonder that she’d managed to drag him back before sunrise, what with her slight frame. Those delicate wrists filled to bursting with the ambrosia on which she’d supped.
Her choice was always pretty young men. Those daring enough to brave dark alleys unlit and unwatched, thinking themselves above the terrors suffered by the painted ladies. Some even thought her to be a strumpet! As if they couldn’t see her. The glowing, ageless skin, drawn taught over her skull. Cheeks always so rosy after a proper feed, filled with stolen life. As if their noses couldn’t catch the scent of deathbells and poesy clinging to her skirts. Her hair gossamer sheets of liquid obsidian that floated and danced with the slightest breeze.
Doomed, the lot of ‘em.
His Dam never shared in his outrage for their mistakes. Oh, no. That beautiful, brilliant creature was happy to be mistaken for a common trollop. Took them in sweet arms as she took their payment from trembling fingers and sodden palms. Always with the sweetest smile on her bloodless lips. Pressing them to her bosom as they stared deep into her bottomless gaze, lost to bliss. Gave them the sweetest send off, his Dam. Allowed them to fill their trousers with salty wetness, while she drank them dry.
Enthralling them made the feast all the sweeter, she’d said. Showed him how to do it, even. Restrained his untrained impulse to bite and rend and break, for to deal pain, she’d said, was for her perfect pet, and he alone.
Her Axton. Her Chyld.
Agony in death was her gift to him. Nothing hidden. Exposed and bloody and raw, she’d given him the truth of the world. Peeled back his eyelids and forced the nancy puff he’d been to truly see the world around him in all its vicious, bleeding glory.
And then she’d killed him.
Axton had understood, then. Heard the voice of his Dam and taken it as dark gospel. Filled his failing human ears with her voice and seized her gift, accepting it into the last flutters of a heart that would never beat again.
She’d given him rebirth, then had shagged him raw right there on the cobbles still wet with unspeakable grime. When he’d cum, it was because she’d opened a heart’s vein above her breast. Had pressed his lips to the wound and tightened about his spurting prick.
Ambrosia, that.
Nothing sweeter.
‘Cept for the hunt.
His dead heart lurched in her direction. Summoned. A Dam’s call trickling through their eternal bond with a sharp lancing pain. It was one he couldn’t resist, for it meant one thing—his Dam had chosen a consort to join them for dinner.
Leaping, Axton clung to the weather piping. Hauling himself onto the roof with nary a sound. Letting their prey see the illusion of a fine lady in need of assistance. Her torn clothing, bloody and smeared. Hair that’d come down from its elegant stays, floated in a delightful, ravished mess above slender shoulders.
Oh, Axton had enjoyed tearing at her underthings before they’d left the nest. Had made a right show of it, he had. Made sure to spill a vein on the lacy corset, even bold enough to mark her perfect throat with a tacky hand print from last night’s games.
All of it an artful illusion designed by her own hand.
A lure of honey and arsenic for the pretty street urchins.
Supper was a fine specimen—tall and strapping. Vigorous and plush with health.
Loved the noble types, his Dam. Loved to play broken dolly and flounder when they came running, only to turn and catch them in her thrall. Sometimes she’d ride them into death, knowing her Chyld was watching the flex of pale flesh. Knew he could hear her cries and theirs. 
Axton didn’t mind it so much. Even when his Dam was thirsting for a fight and they hunted the rougher parts of town where the flesh-peddlers were known to roam. Didn’t mind watching her play the other game, either, though the scent of a thug’s cheap spendings always made his nose wrinkle.
He endured it because he knew his Dam loved the thrill of being pinned to the bricks by ugly, dirty men with rotted teeth. Loved to plead, “Please, good sir, no! You mustn’t! I’m with child!” as they had their fun and spilled their clotted cream.
No, he didn’t mind it. Not when his Dam stepped back with the gleam of black flames crisping up the edges of her smile.
Because she always gave those ones to him.
It was those nights, Axton knew, that taught him the love of the fight.
Must be quicker. Stronger. Don’t want to catch a blade and disappoint his Dam, lest she tire of her Chyld and leave him there to his ashes.
He’d make her proud. Never would there be another like him, he was sure of it. None could match his love for the princess of the night, who’d called him to play in the shadows and had woken him from the dreary mundane torment of life.
From the alley below, he heard her signal. Felt the tug of his maker when she scratched it bloody, calling him from his perch. Ringing the dinner bell.
Pain sliced into his lower lip as his hunger grew and the facade of the human fell away. Revealing the demon behind the mask.
He was hungry.
Always so hungry…