Lisbon, Portugal

This was a city unlike any other. But, then again, aren't they all?

Lively, multi-leveled neighborhoods so well traversed and with such steep ascents they sometimes require an elevator. It was a little surreal, actually, getting on a lovely, century-old elevator in Rossio Square and being whisked away to an entirely different section of the city. Seven steep hills afford an undulating view of red tile roofs, a white-domed cathedral, and the deep blue Tagus River.

Natalia was in Lisbon, Portugal, and business was complete. The contract with the HCR Translations Techniques, Ltd. had been finalized and signed, and The Company would now be taking over all of HCR's financial investment dealings. Stock options, 401Ks, retirement accounts....everything was now being bent and welded to make HCR's employees the most money - though nowhere near as much as The Company itself was going to be making.

It's late on a balmy Saturday night, and the cobblestone streets are packed. He was drinking a heavenly-smelling bica (an espresso-like coffee, unique to the region) on Rua da Barroca, a decidedly tilt-a-whirl street where stylish Lisboners clutching plastic cups (which are far more bar-hopping-friendly than glasses) make the rounds to such night spots as minimalist Clube da Esquina, easygoing Portas Largas, and the frantic Alto Bar. Yet the overall vibe was genial and relaxed; less Spring Break mob scene than laid-back bohemian block party.

Bairro Alto, the "upper town," is primarily a hilly residential district filled with crumbling pastel row houses strung with drying laundry. After the sun goes down, it somewhat startlingly transforms into one of Europe's nightlife hot spots.

And Natalia could think of nowhere else to be.

The bica was not being drank by Natalia, of course, but by a young man that had decided to disdain more alcoholic beverages for the night. Maybe he had to work in the morning and decided it was late. It was late, in the grand scheme of things, though Natalia would be leaving the wonderful city on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean tonight to return to Sussex. Her shopping had been done already, in truth, having gone into the boutique of Lena Aires to make a decadent purchase of stylish shoes, as well as the Rose Studio where she bought some simply fascinating literary art. True to their young clientele for this district of the city of Lisbon, such businesses stayed open well into the night - a fact that Natalia Gioccone could appreciate.

The young man had moved down the sidewalk, and so Natalia followed him. She moved with the predatory grace that she had years of practice with, and he never saw her. Not that he was looking, of course, but the fact remains. The slow-paced chase ended on the Sidewalk of the Duke, a many block-long staircase that begins just west of Rossio Square, in the Cafe Buenos Aires. It was one of Lisbon's many great restaurants featuring food from Latin America. It was a warm, fashionable, magenta-walled bistro. The decor was pleasant, and the service superb - as befits one of the pinnacles of dining experiences in the city.

Natalia was there, all eyes upon him, as she sat at the bar, pretending to drink from a glass of wine. He ordered his food, and when it finally came she saw it appeared to be the grilled Argentinean steak, served with the mulberry and red-wine sauce.

She watched him eat his meal, though the environment around her was truly divine, and fragrant with garlic and cilantro. The bistro itself buzzed with gourmet flair, beautifully lit, and serving to a vivacious media and fashion clientele.

The vibe was youthful, cosmopolitan, and unpretentious - like Natalia herself, at this point in her life, long before she had ever heard of Rhy'Din.

She stalked along, of course, following him after he had paid for his meal. She took in every nuance, every gesture he made as he moved. She could see him clearly, even though the streets now were slick with rain. Cobbles got awfully slippery when wet, but she was sure of footing, and was on the concrete sidewalks anyway.

He was wearing a trench coat, and holding a folded-up black umbrella. He was older than she had expected him to be, at first, but the smell of his blood was still calling to her even through the rain. Even through the rest of the thronging nightlife all about her. He looked almost thirty now, a little tired of life but still chugging along in his rut. His pace was steady, and flowing, and so Natalia moved faster. He crossed the street, glancing up only briefly to peer for answers in the water-dropping leaves hanging from some high tree reaching out over the red tiled buildings from a hidden courtyard. She timed her pace so that she'd bump into him at the crosswalk.

She could count every leaf on that tree, but her attention was on him through the milling crowd. He turns from the leaves and starts walking again. Their eyes meet from a block away, but he doesn't stop moving again. He doesn't turn away. She could read his face, now, noting every line upon it. It must have been a hard life he led, complete with worry, strife, and disappointment to have a face like that before he's even thirty years old. She saw the pain and the hope and the history written in those lines, as well as every last moment of a life that was about to end.

They met there on the sidewalk, her cool skin masked by the rain that showered them both. Him the energetic and frustrated young man, she the relaxed, experienced, and comforting older woman. They came together there on the sidewalk as droplets of water merge to join when they touch one another. She drew him away with the soft croon of a few whispered words of promise and indulgence. That was one of the things she liked about (most) men - they never required that much to nudge them right where you wanted them.

She left him, dazed and confused, whimpering and begging for mercy from the tender touch of velvet hands, the soft crush of supple businesswear, and the sweet, mind-numbing embrace of sanguine rape on the tips of her predatory fangs. He might not even remember her face in the morning when he woke, but she didn't truly pay him very much mind. She pined for him the instant she left him, of course, as she did for all she took inside of her, but she was a busy woman, and business must continue on as it did before. He was a fling, after all, and she had her own permanent herd to tend to back in Sussex.

Aboard the corporate jet again, Natalia Gioccone slid the heavy shade down over the thick Plexiglas window in the luxurious cabin, and closed her eyes. The trip home wouldn't take very long when going from Portugal to England, but it was one that was going to be spent in quiet contemplation, reflection...

...and relish of the little sounds the young man made as she slid her teeth across his flesh.

Author's Warning: EXPLICIT CONTENT WITHIN. The following story was done as tastefully as I possibly could, while still expressing the fact that Natalia is not human, and that she is a monster. While it's not very terribly sexualized in terms of the words used, it is, I think, perhaps THE MOST graphic post I've ever written. Reader discretion is strongly, strongly advised. The story, while I think illustrates a very key part of the character (namely the dichotomy between the inner beast, and the struggle for humanity), contains segments of: Wanton, brutal murder. Forced necrophilia. Forced incest. Forced homosexuality. Sexual torture. If you even think you might be offended by such subject matter, I beg and implore you — PLEASE — do not continue past this point.

It's also extraordinarily long.

London, England

She couldn't think of anything or anywhere better to be dead. London has been one of the oldest and most historic cities in the world, and perhaps also the number one hotspot for those of a more....alternative bent. There are even a great many mortals who like to call it the City of Shadows.

A thought that always causes a smile to crease upon Natalia's face when she thinks of it. It is one of the few places where you can walk down one of the crookedly dark and seedy streets completely unnoticed. You see, London is a breeding place of the weird and beautiful, sliding and wandering from haunt to haunt.

There are numerous pubs and clubs as well as some of the oldest gothic architecture on the capital's most famous buildings. Just take a look at the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Palace. Or even Hampton Court Palace. Little do the English politicians know about where they are conducting business. Little do they know that the city is bursting with all things dark and musky.

Not only does the city house so many born London Goths, but it also tempts others to follow the same powerful path. It actually whispers and beckons visitors to its numerous tourist traps of all things torturous.

And it was that particular calling that whispered to Natalia Gioccone while she was taking a much-deserved holiday away from the business of the company. Mr. Ionesco himself insisted upon it.

She had dressed the part this night. First, Natalia made a special trip to a gothic boutique to purchase clothing that she might better fit into the role of bondage queen. In the summation of things, she felt the outfit ridiculous, but there she was nevertheless wandering down the oldest Victorian streets where Jack the Ripper once went on a rampage against prostitutes, wearing a loosely-laced restraint skirt, and more tightly-bound corset. They had matched, the two, with red pipe-tubing trimming the shimmering black latex. It had taken a good deal of talc powder to shimmy her dry, cold skin into the gripping material, but once done, she decided that even she could make the outfit look marvelous, and classy. Hers was not the role of simpering, collared plaything — she was the mistress, holder of the leash and crop.

Her first visit that night had been a tour of the Chamber of Horrors. There she took a look at London's many powers of persuasion via some of the very best torturing tools ever known. Such as the widely-loved guillotine which was a very popular form of entertainment, and many people would line the streets hoping for a front row view. They still do.

London was a deadly and dangerous place to be back in Victorian times. Though she was born considerably after that point of history, sometimes, very late at night, she could still stand on the corner of an old street near a more modern round-about, close her eyes, and listen to the screams of the past.

After a night of sight-seeing, she felt the need to recharge her immortal bones. A map was perused, as well as a book she had purchased in the gothic boutique outlining the hotspots of London. In the 1980s, the first true Goth Club venue was opened, and remains open to this day. And so it was that she went to the Batcave, and poised herself so perfectly upon a barstool, watching the young mortals dance to the pulse of techno music, the flash of strobe light, and the whirling dervish of neon glowsticks.

It was a pungent place, with the scents of cigarette smoke mixed with cologne and perfume and the sweat of the men and women going to great lengths to hide their various imperfections from each other. The music thrummed through her brain, making her head throb and, in another life and time, very likely would have given her a headache. She could barely see the couples dimly outlined in the low light sitting at the tables lined up on the other side of the vast room, the bodies of the dancers out on the floor interfering with her view.

It didn't matter; she wasn't really interested in looking anyway.

Natalia was far more interested in being looked at.

And so it was that her self-possessed appearance and her calm, detached demeanor attracted just the attention she was looking for. She first spied the little thing down the length of the bar, smiling. Her eyes were traveling, too, ingesting Natalia as hungrily as a starved lion in a cage surrounded by ragged pieces of bloody meat.

Her platinum blonde hair was streaked in places with pink, and seemed to be arranged into faux dreadlocks. You could always tell that they were temporarily done, usually with something as simple as Elmer's glue, because they actually didn't look like a ratty cockroach next atop the person's head. She was dressed in the same role Natalia herself was; a cinched black corset that curved underneath the swell of her breasts (though she maintained a modicum of dignity with what appeared to be black strips of electrical tape over her very-obviously pierced nipples) but, unlike Natalia, she was not wearing a skirt or dress, preferring instead the more forward statement of latex thigh-high boots, with fishnet hosiery vanishing up underneath the corset. A veritable slew of latex bands extended from the bottom of the corset like a roman legionnaire's mail skirt, and each of them were capped with a proper D-ring. About her throat, too, was a thin collar of black leather, with a large o-ring laying against her chest. She wasn't entirely certain, but Natalia could almost imagine some kind of metallic embroidery on the front of the collar in sparkling, block-print letters spelling out the word whore.

Fitting, Natalia thought, and in that moment, that single instant of eye contact, she had fallen in love.

Natalia didn't have to speak. Not hardly at all, anyway. The darling little creature was more than able to discern a smoldering look from Natalia's dark eyes, and it didn't take long for the gothed-out Italian to make her exit, trailed shortly behind by the platinum-haired beauty that she was going to take to her bed for a night of rapture.

Nothing was said, still. The Underground was still running — a rarity at this time of the night — and so Natalia boarded the car and took a seat elegantly. Her pursuer, her devoted little dog, followed her on and moved to take a seat.

"Keep your feet," the Rose had said plainly. She said it with every bit of authority that she should have had; after all, was she not the Mistress, and this girl the toy'

She remained standing. Natalia could smell her from here, she could hear the way her body was reacting. The girl's pulse had quickened, her breathing intensified. Perhaps she was growing excited on a physical level, to match Natalia's psychological one" Perhaps. She would have had to reach out and rip her mind open, to lay all her secrets bare, to fully know. She didn't. Natalia enjoyed a good surprise from time to time.

The next stop, Natalia rose from her position on the bench, and left the Underground. And, ever, she was tailed by the blonde, some ten feet to her rear. Emerging from the station, Natalia imagined the scent of Piccadilly Circus, there in the crossroads of several of London's boroughs. Soho, where she had just come from, was down one of those streets, though she wasn't certain exactly what the direction was. She moved over to the great fountain in the middle of Piccadilly, and sat upon the carved edge.

When she had turned to sit, she took in the view of her little lovely. Natalia liked a surprise from time to time, but not this kind. The girl apparently didn't expect the Rose to turn around. Perhaps she was anticipating her to admire the construction of the ancient statue atop the fountain, but she was now red-handed, such as it was. And that hand held within it the threatening point of a sharpened wooden stake.

Natalia blinked in surprise, and shook her head, muttering to herself a few choice Italian curses.

"I....I'm going to kill you, now, and let you rest," the blonde stammered. Not only was this delectable little treat a vampire-hunter, but she seemed to be a most amateur one. There was always the possibility that she could have talked her way out of this, fooled the girl into thinking the pale skin and her complete lack of body heat had something to do with what she was wearing.

"Are you, girl?" Natalia's smile was pointed, and predatory, as she extended her arms out to the side. "Come then. Slay me, if you will."

It was comical. It would have also been a horrible break of the Masquerade if there had even been another soul on the streets. But not in Piccadilly — this is why she had chosen this place. Only Soho was really a twenty-four hour town, and that was some miles from here. The blonde lunged forward with the stake; an attack easily blocked by the vampire with a crushing grip to the girl's wrist. She yanked her up onto her toes, and smiled so-sweetly.

"You need a lesson, little hunter. And I will give it to you."

Fangs erupted from her gums, and the old-world beauty released a deep, serpentine hiss. It, by itself, was a frightening thing to behold, but this was not merely a physical act. The force of her Presence backed this Dread Gaze, with the capability of affecting the strongest-willed mortal, driving them into abject terror. Tethered as she was in Natalia's grip, though, she could merely thrash and scream and shudder until—

Natalia released her, letting the little self-proclaimed whore fall to the concrete at the base of the fountain. She rose to her feet, and ran as swiftly as she could away from the Italian Rose. This suited her purpose, so she didn't run her to the ground. After all, the lesson had just begun.

—-

Blondie entered her home; a modest flat in London's East Side, and gasped softly. It was terrifying. It was petrifying. It made her never want to even try to help the citizens of this dark world again! And, look! Somewhere after that, she had even managed to drop the stake that she had made. Hmpf.

She entered the flat, reaching down to unzip the tall boots she wore, and slipped out of them, wriggling her fishnetted toes against the soft, plush, thick carpeting. "Angela" Are you home?"

"Yes, Sara," she heard her sister call back from her bedroom down the hall, "I'm in here reading. Did you have fun on your little adventure?"

If she only knew Sara thought to herself. She moved down the hallway, tossing those fetish boots to the side in a careless, twenties-something manner, and made her way to the bathroom. As she flipped on the light, she looked over the collection of...

"Angela," she said, a bit annoyed, "did you take my make-up remover out of the loo?"

No answer.

"Angela?"

No answer.

Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she turned and stormed back down the hallway to her sister's room. She pounded on the door with the flat of her hand.

No answer.

"Angela!?"

No answer.

Twisting the knob, the door flung open and she stormed inside, expecting to find the brunette Angela with her bottle of make-up remover and a sly grin. What she saw instead was...

...that woman....

From earlier. Her heart leapt up into her throat, and she stood frozen to the spot. The dark-eyed vampiress was curled up onto the bed with her sister, casually stroking her fingers smoothly over Angela's forehead. She was almost purring.

Sara thought she was going to sick up right on the spot. Angela's body had been stripped hastily, and her cotton pajamas were laying in a pile of shreds on the floor next to the bed. Only her socks remained on, and every inch of her body was lewdly displayed from the wide set of her heels against her bed mattress. Worst of all, though, her head — the one the woman was petting" — wasn't even attached anymore. The skin was stretched, the bones twisted. It looked....it looked like it had been crudely ripped off.

"Darling," the vampire said quietly, "do be a dear and come closer to us. This beautiful lady needs your attention."

Against her will, Sara felt her feet rise and fall, walking mechanically up toward the edge of the bed. The dark-eyed woman rose to her feet, dropping Angela's head back down onto the blood and gore-smattered mattress with every bit of care as if she were dropping a pillow.

"On your knees, mortal," she demanded, and the blonde felt her legs turn to jelly beneath her. She fell with a dull thud, and somewhere in the back of her logical mind — past the screaming and the shock — she hoped the neighbors downstairs didn't hear that.

The vampire gripped her hair tightly and pushed forward. She tried to resist, but the creature was stronger than she had every imagined. Sara had heard that they were powerful, but to be able to handle her like a rag doll"

All thought was purged from her mind as her face was forced up against her sister's body, wedged there between her thighs. It was warm, still; she hadn't been dead for long, but dry.

"Service her," the vampire crooned gently, leaning down over her shoulder. Sara realized with a good deal of horror that she was positioning herself to watch closely.

She squirmed, trying in vain to push up against the monster's hand, "No....please, no...I— I promise I'll....I promise I'll never try to slay one of your kind again. Please, I—"

Sara's words were cut short as her face was pushed against Angela's body again, so firmly that she couldn't even breathe. She tried to resist even then, but the burn in her lungs cried out for relief.

Forcing her lips to open, she snaked her tongue out against her headless sister's slit. The texture was smooth enough, by her estimates, and as her saliva covered the skin it got easier to continue. The pressure eased up, and she could almost feel the grin on the face of the vampire behind her. She didn't know how long of time had passed. She just did her part. She did what she had to do. She couldn't stop herself. She didn't enjoy it. Not in the least.

And how she managed to keep her dinner down, she'd never know. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she prayed to God Almighty to deliver her from the torment she faced.

Abruptly, Sara felt the woman's hand grip tightly into her hair, and yank her up onto her feet. She stumbled backward, barely keeping her feet before her shoulders smashed into the wall beside the door. In an instant, the woman was upon her. She felt the crush of their bodies, and it knocked the wind out of her. Gasping like a fish out of its water, she offered no resistance in the least as the dark-eyed vampire's hand rose, and took a grip of the corset still upon her midsection. With a cruel jerk, she felt the laces and buckles holding the corset snap.

The vampire leaned forward, calmly and ....and almost gently caressing the lobe of her ear with the cold touch of her lips. "Don't worry, duckling. Not all dead things are so unresponsive..."

—-

Natalia took her amusement out on the fledgling vampire hunter until she was amused no longer. Every manner of hedonistic humiliation she could imagine, she imposed upon the impudent little mortal upstart. From sodomizing her with her cold, dry fingers to forcing her into compromising twists of naked flesh with her sister's corpse, she relished every single tear, every whimper, every plea for it all to end. And, in the end, when Natalia was no longer enjoying herself, she allowed the blonde to join the brunette in death, their reunion heralded by the sickening crunch of bone and a twisted neck.

The next night, Natalia returned to Sussex to work. She had been given a week of leave, but had taken only two nights of it. The short flight on the company jet offered her a few moments of respite, time to recollect and mull over the heinous act — even by her standards, it was a horrible thing — she had just committed.

There was remorse, yes, but there was also....satisfaction.

Natalia shook her head, bitterly. That little scrap of remorse was like a candle compared to the burning pyre of the satisfaction she had felt as she enjoyed the mortal girl's final, gasping breath. She had gone to teach a lesson on what happens when upstart little humans attempt to meddle in the affairs of their betters, and here she was now bidding a fond arrivederci to another part of her humanity.

"A monster I am," she confessed to the empty night sky out the window of the plane.