The Keeper Of Darkness (a gothic tale of love, desire, desperation, and music)

TKoD Ch. 27 (cont'd.)


Now she had gotten them to the point of complete and utter submission, between her bondage pain sessions and the pleasure of feeding time.
They had finally accepted their fate as submissive vampires.

It was time to start training them to fight.

Of course, they were more like cannon fodder than anything else, just extra bodies to help make up the required seven.

Kris doubted that either of these girls had what it took to be an effective fighter, but if they were going to be destroyed in the battle, she would be happy to sacrifice them for the sake of gaining two much more worthwhile slaves.

Little Vicky and Erica together, oh my demons, the many possibilities!
Kris felt her fangs extending involuntarily at the thought of it, as if she could already smell them and taste their blood.

Between what she was doing to Janet and Diana, and what she was thinking about doing to Vicky and Erica once she had them under her thumb, she was starting to get just a bit moist between her legs now, oozing her arousal into her black silk thong panties under her tight skinny jeans.

She walked over to where Diana was hanging, and quickly thrust one hand down into the suspended girl’s undies while pressing her other hard onto the poor girl’s swollen bladder.

The sudden pressure of Kris’ ice cold hands in both places at once had Diana gasping behind her ball gag.
She squirmed as much as her bonds would allow her to as a brief spurt of pee escaped her and ran straight into the tube which was connecting her bladder to Janet’s mouth funnel.

As Kris saw the first flow of clear liquid passing through the tube, she grinned evilly.

The real test of the system was how it would work the other way though, from the bottom up.

Seeing as how both toys were just about as full as they could be, Kris decided there was no point in delaying the inevitable; this was only a test run in any event.

She decided to hasten things along by spanking Diana’s upturned bottom with a wooden paddle.
The paddling was punishment for her losing control and wetting her panties without permission in front of Cestus at Le Petit Bal.

The burning pain of that spanking had her losing control again after just a few hard swats on her rear, and the clear urine started to flow constantly as her full bladder began rapidly voiding its contents uncontrollably while she twitched and squirmed in her bonds, moaning from behind her ball gag.

Janet’s eyes widened in horror; she could see Diana’s hot pee running through the tube towards her mouth and knew there was no way to prevent that from happening.

At least it was almost entirely fresh water that had just been pumped into her, not liquid which had been processed through the suspended girl’s kidneys…

'It doesn’t taste bad at all, thank goodness,' Janet thought. 'She sure is peeing an awful lot though ...'

Kris laid the paddle down; she couldn’t spank Janet to get her to pee since she was lying face up below Diana, and since Janet had only wet at Le Petit Bal in reaction to Kris tugging on her bondage rope, she was being punished a bit less severely.

Kris had decided on tickle torture for Janet, and even as she was being forced to swallow the liquid flowing down the tube from Diana’s bladder, the sadistic red headed vampire had begun to tickle first her bare feet, then her belly, and finally her armpits.

Unable to wriggle or laugh, poor Janet started to relieve her tension in the only way she could, by peeing.

Now that Kris had unblocked the tube, the pressure that had built up in Janet's bladder was so severe that the urine flowed out of her quite forcefully, making its way up the narrow tube which passed through Diana’s ball gag and directly into the mouth of the girl in suspension above her.

“It works!”
The evil little vampire clapped her hands together and practically squealed with delight.

Now Kris couldn’t resist a few extra swats on Diana’s already reddened bottom as each girl continued to empty the contents of her full bladder into the mouth of the other.
The best part was that if she kept them like this long enough, all of the liquid they had just been forced to swallow would be processed through their bodies, and then they would be ready to pee again.

At the thought of a near perfect circle of intake and output between the two helpless girls, Kris was on the brink of orgasm.

She decided to leave the girls as they were, anticipating a second round of exchange between the two of them.

It would be a while before they were ready to pee again, and she needed a few moments to herself right now.


<to be continued>

\/-----\/

The Keeper Of Darkness
Ch. 28 - Supernatural
Essex, UK 2006

https://soundcloud.com/frostyjr2%2Fsuper-natural-thing

The cancer was growing within her, spreading through her body like wildfire raging through a dry woodland forest.
The doctors had given her only a couple of months to live.

“Sorry, but there is nothing we can do.”

‘Incurable’, ‘too advanced for treatment’, ‘little to no hope of remission’…

By now, she had heard all the different versions of the same thing time after time.
No matter how many specialists she had consulted, the end result was still the same: a death sentence.

How unfair was it, after all the time she'd lost in that institution, to be finally free and then to have her present happiness snatched away from her in this manner?

It wasn’t even her incessant smoking catching up to her, she thought.
Liver cancer; then it had spread … oh, the irony of it.

Now she had to tell Peter and Vicky.


-----------------------------------------------------------------


Petra pulled her dark blue BMW Z3 into the driveway at the Kushkin family estate.

She could see Peter and Vicky were already there, her twin brother’s black M5 parked next to her little sister’s silver M3.

There was a third car in the driveway also though, an unfamiliar one.
It was a brand new Alpine White Z3, with its more powerful all-aluminum straight six motor producing almost 190 horsepower.
Hers was the older 1.9 litre four cylinder version.

‘Nice car,’ she thought to herself as she pulled in alongside it. ‘Hmm, I wonder who it belongs to?’

She got out of her car, then dropped and stepped on the cigarette which had burned down almost to the filter before pulling out a pack of Gitanes from the inside pocket of her fitted leather jacket.

She tapped the end of the pack against the fender of her car, then removed another cigarette from the pack and placed it between her pretty lips, lit it with her Bic lighter, and inhaled deeply.

‘What difference could it possibly make now?’ she thought, smiling bitterly.
‘I might as well enjoy whatever time I’ve got left.’

Steeling herself for a major emotional maelstrom, she slowly walked up the steps to the house and pushed open the door.

As Petra moved past the foyer and into the large living room she saw her two siblings, but she was surprised to see that there were three other people there as well.

Vicky ran to greet her, embracing her warmly before she spoke.

“You remember Hannah and Erica, I’m sure, and this is their sister, Kat.”

Petra said, “Not that I'm not pleased to see you girls again, or to meet you, Kat ... but I thought this was going to be a family meeting.”

“We are family; we have been ever since Erica turned Vicky, remember?” Hannah replied.

Erica added, “When she told us what was happening with you, we had to come over here immediately.”

“Ahh, so you've heard then?" Petra said, a wan look on her face.
"I appreciate your concern, but there’s really nothing to be done, or so they tell me. I’m to pray for a miracle, I suppose.”

Erica smiled at her remark, glancing over at Hannah before speaking in a low voice.

“Miracles can happen, you know. And they come in many different forms…. Sometimes, even a curse can turn out to be a kind of miracle.”

Vicky nodded, and as if in response to her cue, Kat suddenly seized Peter from behind, while Erica firmly grasped his twin sister, immobilizing her.
As she laid Petra down tenderly onto her back, lowering her head into Vicky's lap, she spoke to her now, her voice soft and hypnotic.

“You know that you desire this more than anything; give in now, and become one of us," Erica said.
"It is your destiny to become our sister; you know this in your heart and always have, ever since we first met.”

As soon as Erica finished speaking, Petra felt herself relax, realizing the truth of it.

Hannah began to feed her the blood and shadow essence cocktail mixture from a large glass she held up to her soft lips.
Petra drank deeply of the liquid in the glass, feeling as if her entire body was being consumed by fire as it began changing her, her damaged cells rapidly regenerating, chasing the cancer from her as she became something new and different, something no longer quite of this world ...

Peter cried “NO!” as Kat took hold of him, but he was powerless to resist.
The small vampire holding him was far too strong, and there was no way for him to escape her grip no matter how hard he struggled.

Kat bared her fangs and sank them deep into Peter’s neck.
The sensation was almost sexual to him, the initial pain mingled with a sweet pleasure that was totally irresistible.

In just an instant he was captivated, and he gave himself over to the feeling completely, falling under Kat’s spell as she continued to feed, draining the blood from him.

When she finally stopped, he was weak, but blissful.
To die like this wouldn’t be a bad way to go, he thought.

Then Kat sliced at her wrist, and held the cut to his mouth.

Unable to help himself, he began to suck at it, taking her blood into his mouth and swallowing it, gulping it down eagerly before Kat eventually pulled her wrist away, saying, “That’s quite enough, my boy.”

It had felt wonderful to her to mingle her essence with his, and now they were joined forever.


Meanwhile, Vicky cradled Petra’s head in her lap, stroking her soft, sweet-smelling hair and gazing into her older sister’s dark brown eyes as Erica held her close and Hannah continued to feed her the liquid cocktail that would not ever let her die.

“You both never gave up on me, and saved me more than once," Victoria smiled.
"Now it’s my turn to repay you … we discussed this, and we refuse to let either of you die so needlessly, so senselessly.”

“This is our gift to the both of you … good health and eternal life. Please forgive us; we do this out of our love for you.”
As Vicky said this, Hannah smiled sadly.

She of all people knew their ‘gift’ was at best a mixed blessing, but for Petra at least, it was her only hope, and it seemed unfair to condemn Peter to grow old alone, without either of his sisters.

In time, the twins would accept what had happened to them, just as they all had had to.

In time …

---------------------------------------------------------

TKoD Ch. 28 (cont'd.)
NYC, present day


Hannah opened the envelope containing the challenge with a single swipe of a razor sharp fingernail and spilled its contents out onto the living room coffee table as River and I sat on either side of her.

What was inside was a rather old fashioned calling card with an address in Porte de Vanves, and a playing card: the 7 of Spades.

OMHG, Judith and Kris were challenging us after all this time?

'They must have finally found enough allies to take us on', i thought to myself, 'and they must be pretty strong ones.'

I wondered who the other five were that they had gotten to join them.
Well, it didn’t make too much difference anyhow.
We now had to come up with seven fighters to match that number. although there were only three of us there at the moment.

Luckily, as the challenged clan, we could at least specify the time, the place, and the weapons.

If I knew Hannah, she’d want this over and done with as soon as possible, and she’d choose blades.
That would suit me just fine, and i knew Kat would be happy as well, but i wasn’t sure how well the rest of the clan would cope.

I was definitely sure of this though: it was going to be a nasty battle, and before it was over, there was a good chance that some heads would roll.


<to be continued>

V----V

The Keeper Of Darkness
Ch. 29 - WoD

https://soundcloud.com/frostyjr2%2Fwod-22b-808

The Warehouse, New York City, present day

It had been a couple of days now since River had pulled her disappearing act and Hannah and i were starting to get a little worried, because she had seemed really upset at her inability to handle the katana, especially in contrast to both Vicky and Petra.

In any case, worried or not, we just had to keep training and hope that she would return to us soon.
In the coming fight, we at least needed to field the correct number of fighters in order not to forfeit the challenge, and if Hannah and I had to protect River and keep her safe while Kat, Vicky, and the twins cut the opposition down to a more manageable number, we could live with that.

The main problem was we had no idea of the strength of the opposing clan, since all they had to declare was the number of fighters they would be represented by.
We could count on Judith and Kris, and the two of them were undoubtedly competent and experienced.
The other five were a complete mystery, and would probably remain so right up until the moment we confronted them.
We simply had to train our hardest and prepare for the worst case scenario, seven lethal vamps facing us.

Normally it would have fallen to Hannah to formulate our plan but as an enforcer she was used to fighting one-on-one, while Kat had been up against more than one opponent at a time in the arena so she had experience in that situation both alone and as part of a small group.

Kat's plan was for us to form a circle around River, and facing outwards we would defend against any attack on her.
By fighting mainly defensively until we could isolate any weak links in the opposing clan, we could conserve our strength and energy, and then hopefully dispatch the weakest ones rapidly so that we would have them outnumbered.

Personally, I thought the plan was a bit optimistic; I didn’t see how we would be able to hold the circle for very long, but Kat was convinced it would work and she had a lot more experience in these matters than I did, that was certain.

She had the five of us in a circle around a chair while she took turns attacking each of us with the tips and edges of her twin blades, and you can believe me when I say that her attacks were furious; to me it felt as if she was really going for the kill, even though I knew she was probably only in cruise mode, maybe giving about five or six tenths of what she was really capable of.
She didn’t want to put any of us out of commission before the actual fight, just give us a workout and a taste of what was to come.

Well, i was getting a workout for sure…
I was dripping clear blue perspiration from all over, from my forehead, from my armpits, it was dripping down the small of my back from between my shoulder blades under my black lycra sportsbra, the waistband of my matching leggings was soaked with it…
I was wet almost everywhere.

My breath was coming hard and ragged, but I was still able to hold the katana up in the proper position to parry a strike.

Damn, girl … there was only one of her, and she was testing us like this!
Only Hannah seemed unfazed; she wasn’t sweating, or even breathing hard like the rest of us.

She was just standing there; calm, her katana at the ready, eyes focused … waiting.

Suddenly, I heard that familiar rustling sound and felt a chill on my back.

When I turned around, there was River, sitting in the chair in the middle of our circle.
She was holding a large and oddly shaped blue canvas bag in her lap and she was smiling broadly.

“Hi, sweetie! Welcome back,” i said.

I wanted to give her a huge hug, but I still had a razor sharp katana in my hands.
There would be time for hugs and kisses later.

“Yes, welcome back! Where did you get off to, then?” Petra asked.

“I had to fetch something, something I haven’t had in my hands for quite a while,” she replied.

She opened the bag, and pulled out a fencing sabre.

She raised it up in salute, and then said, “En garde!” before lunging savagely at me.

I barely had time to parry her lightning fast thrust before she whirled around, attacking from the other side.
Her insane speed made her just a blur of motion, her footwork was precise and sure, and the way she handled that sabre, OMHG.
She kept up her ferocious onslaught for a bit while i defended as best i could before Hannah finally laughed and said, "OK, you can stop now. We get the point."

And so did i, unfortunately; now it was me that was the weakest link.

In any case, River had shown her true capabilities, and Hannah didn’t want us getting hurt before the upcoming challenge either.
We all had to be at 100%.

“Where the bloody hell did that come from?” Peter muttered.

“I couldn’t handle the katana; it was too heavy and not balanced for me, but there are blades, and then there are blades,” River said.
“I was a Junior Fencing Champion once, before I became what I am now. If I can use this in the challenge instead, I shouldn’t be totally helpless.”

Kat reared her head back and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” River asked, a bit defensively.

“Oh, nothing,” Kat said in reply. “It’s just that you remind me of someone I once knew, a long, long time ago.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Imperial Gaul, circa 85 A.D.

The campfire was warm, although there was already a hint of winter in the air.
Catulla and Despina (for that was what the girl with the green eyes was called) were huddled together under a blanket of sorts made out of wolf skins.

The unfortunate wolf pack that had thought to have the two vampire girls for a meal had ended up being dinner themselves, the meat and blood enough to sustain them for a few days.

They needed blood to survive now; Despina had made that very clear.
She didn’t regret what she had done, because as far as she was concerned there had been no other real option.
It was either let the girl who had saved her perish from loss of blood, or turn her.

Now they were traveling through the countryside together, and at nightfall they rested.
Despina had no real clan; she had become a vampire after being acquired as a slave.

Her lanista master was actually a vampire himself, but he was one of the rare ones, a daywalker.
He was impervious to sunlight, and all of his fighters were daywalker vampires too, slave vampires who fought viciously in the arena, and who, as victors, could slake their thirst to the amusement of the crowd.

Despina had been relatively new to both combat and to the vampire life when she and Catulla had battled in the arena; as such, her skill, strength and speed hadn't been exceptional; now, after training alongside Catulla for the past four years, the two of them were almost invincible as a team.
Despina was now extraordinarily fast, and of course she now also had the strength that came with being a mature vampire.
While Catulla was not quite as fast, she was a bit stronger, and much more experienced a fighter.

They had had to give up the arena of course; it was too public and they had to keep a low profile now, after what they had done to Catulla’s husband and the four soldiers who had tortured her on his behalf and left her dying in the woods on the day they had first met.

Before leaving Rome, they had first found all four soldiers drinking up the profits from their crime in a small tavern.
When the soldiers left the tavern at closing time, roaring drunk, Despina and Catulla had followed them into a dark alley where they had stopped to relieve themselves and showed them what a vampire’s thirst was like, draining all four completely.

The last one had actually lost control of his bladder and wet himself just like a little girl, trembling in fear as Catulla had approached him, her eyes flashing and fangs red with the blood of his fallen companions.
He even had the nerve to beg for mercy!

Mercy ... they had been merciful indeed, for his end was comparatively swift and painless, especially compared to what they had done to Catulla's husband.
First they had taken his hands, and then his feet, then his eyes, and finally, his manhood; by the time they had finished with him, he had been begging for death, but they had left him alive to suffer.

"Catulla, why do you shiver now? The fire is blazing, and we are warm beneath our blanket, are we not?"

Despina wrapped her arms around Catulla, holding her even more tightly in her strong embrace.

"Fear not, it was but a fleeting thought, and one of no import," Catulla replied, returning her vampire lover's caresses.


<to be continued>
\/-----\/

The Keeper Of Darkness
Ch. 30 - HOURGLASS (River and Cool)

https://soundcloud.com/frostyjr2%2Fsome-frantic-ish-18-05-21-1812

at the loft, NYC present day


My little sister River was sitting over by the large bay window in the living room looking out at the night, and she was listening to some music with her headphones on.
It was something 'aggro', as she would put it.
That much i could tell just by the way her body was moving in time with the music, even without our empathetic connection ... or the volume bleed.

As i watched, i saw her close her beautiful blue eyes, and now her head was bobbing a bit to the beat, her long dark straight hair swaying softly as if stirred by a gentle breeze.

We were both squirming with the desperation of a good long hold; that in itself wasn't anything unusual.

Nope, just a normal night as far as that went, but I think my worries over the upcoming battle hadn't lessened since my night out with Petra.
If anything, they had only gotten worse and now it was as if they had become contagious; they had spread to River like some horrible infectious disease, and it was all my fault for not being able to control my emotions as well as i would have liked.

Normally when she had the choice, River preferred to listen to music on the main Tesla system; with all of its clarity and ‘liveness’, it really was just like being there.
If her headphones were on, it was a sure sign that something was bothering her.
That was her way of retreating into her own space, since it helped her to block our psychic connection just a bit.

Not enough for me to not feel her anxiety, though.

I had had a lot more time and experience with thought reading and thought projection, so what was going through her head was going through mine as well.

‘Sure, I was a former fencing champion when I was younger, and I’ve been training hard for this fight ...
but OMG, how do you compare a championship match to this?
This isn’t my little ego on the line here, this is all of our futures, and really, even simple survival for most of us.
If we don’t win, Eri and Vicky will be enslaved, and the rest of us will surely be destroyed, since they don’t need or want us for any other purpose.
We have to win; we just have to …’

Little did she know, but the reality was that we were actually trapped between two equally unpleasant alternatives.

Yes, to lose the fight would mean that both Vicky and i would have to become the star attractions in the theatre of pain while Hannah, Kat, Peter, Petra, and even my sweet little sister River would probably all be doomed to painful destruction at the vengeful hands of Judith and her evil clan.
That much was obvious to anyone who knew the rules of engagement and battle ... but what wasn’t obvious was the equally real danger to the winning clan; for us, to destroy a fellow vampire was to take on some of their essence, good or evil.

Hannah had laid it all out for me some time after her very first 'seek snd destroy' mission as an enforcer, when she had encountered the vampire who called himself Lucifer.
When i asked her why he hadn’t simply destroyed her when he had had the chance, she told me he had explained how it worked to her: at least some of the essence of the destoyed vampire lives on in the soul of the destroyer, and so it was really only his reluctance to taint his perverse purity of evil.

I had already seen the opposite process of invasive evil at work in Hannah; although she did her very best to show mercy to her opponents in her enforcer missions, there were a few times when she had been forced to destroy her adversaries, and those occasions had definitely left their mark on her.

I asked her once why she continued to stay on as an enforcer, and she had simply told me that it wasn’t really a choice, but rather an obligation that she had to fulfill.

I tried to get her to say what and why, but she refused to discuss it any further, and that was that.
i know my place.

As for me, I couldn’t see the obligation in it, but after all this time I knew how deep Hannah’s principles and her sense of honor ran; her ethics and her moral center were everything to her, possibly even more important than her love for me.

And so she stayed, but with each vampire she had had to destroy i could feel a slight change in my lover.

She became just that little bit colder, that little bit crueler, that little bit more distant, and I grieved at the loss.
Although it was apparent to me because of the manner in which our existence was intertwined, the changes were happening to her in such slight increments that to Hannah it was as if nothing had been happening at all.

The most insidious part of the curse was its gradual nature because for someone like Hannah, the slow, virtually imperceptible erosion of her moral center was truly a fate worse than destruction.

Knowing what i did now, i wasn’t sure how even a victory in this clan challenge could possibly be a good thing.
To me, it seemed as if we had been maneuvered into a situation where all we could do was lose.

Just as i thought that, River turned towards me.
She opened her lovely blue eyes and stared straight into my green ones.

We were both still squirming, even a bit more now than before if possible.

Just another night at home for us shadow vamps ...

“Here, listen to this with me, sis,” she said with a smile.

She continued to pee dance even as she cued up a different song on her TeslaPod and sent it to the main system in the loft.
It was one of her favourite bands, and since she'd been staying with us I had grown to like them a lot as well, even though my usual tastes ran to other genres.
The fact that they were fellow vampires didn't hurt either.

She turned it up.
Loud.

And then she hugged me tight.

--------------------------------

TkoD
ch. 30 (cont'd.)

https://soundcloud.com/frostyjr2%2Ffull-moon-miezo-meditation

excerpt from the personal journals of Hannah Oliveiros


Just how long does it take for a good soul to become evil?

I suppose it depends on exactly how much evil you end up absorbing, and how good you were to begin with of course.

If you were able to stay away from the things that turn one’s soul evil, for example, killing in general (and destroying other ‘evil’ vampires in particular), you could quite possibly go on forever without feeling even the slightest touch of evil … but you would also have to stay out of the trouble and strife of the day-to-day (or in our case, night-to-night) world.

Can one just stand by, impassive, watching the events of the mortal world unfold without being touched in some way, or moved to action?

Just because one is undead, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one is uncaring, incapable of love, or devoid of a sense of justice.

And having powers and capabilities far beyond those of normal human beings, were these gifts (for some of us think of them as gifts, truly) bequeathed to us simply so that we might watch while everything around us continues to spiral downwards, or will some of us do what we can to reverse the trend, to act, to fight for what we know to be right, no matter the cost to us personally?

There certainly are those of us who have chosen to use their powers to their own personal advantage, or at least so it might appear to them at first, but all of us have a soul, even those of us who are undead …
and the souls of the undead are at even greater risk, because we cannot be reborn the way normal human souls are.


For us, the laws of karma are all the more important, because the evolution of our souls will take place throughout one long existence, and our progress along the path will be confined to this one body, with our spiritual evolution a real and present and obvious thing.

So where does that leave us?

To not act in the face of injustice is in itself a sort of action, a sin of omission, if you believe in such things.

And so, over these long years, I have acted, and fought for the things I thought were right.
Love, compassion, and understanding have been my guiding lights, and the path of the greatest good for the greatest number is the one I have walked.

f I must be damned in order to save the others, so be it.

The sacrifice of my own soul, this one small existence to save so many others will always be worthwhile, and the paradox of allowing my soul to be corrupted and damned may very well in the end lead to my salvation.

Either way, I am willing to pay that price …
for Erica, and for the many I do not know who may yet otherwise fall victim to the evil that we will soon face.


<TO BE CONTINUED>

The Keeper Of Darkness
Ch. 31 - Occupied Paris Blues, first chorus
Paris, France Late Fall, 1940

The soldiers were getting boisterous.
A group of them had gathered in this small Belleville café which remained open despite the curfew, and now they were all drunk, harassing the waiters and insulting anyone there who had the unfortunate luck to look less than ideally Aryan in their eyes.

Now a few of them had come over to the table where Hannah, Kat and the thin man in the light grey suit were sitting, quietly nursing their drinks, listening to the music, and doing their best to ignore the rest of what was going on around them.

“You, there! Yes, you,” the fat man who seemed to be their leader said as he pointed a stubby finger at Hannah.
“Zigeuner scum! Soon we’ll eliminate you all, you low-lifes!”

His uniform was black, and it bore the insignia of the infamous 3rd SS Panzer Division, the 'Totenkopf' or Death's Head.

Hannah’s eyes flashed red very briefly before she got herself under control, and then she slowly laid her hands flat on the table in front of her and forced herself to take another deep breath before answering.

“Actually, I’m not a Gypsy. I am originally from Egypt, but that’s not the same thing.”
Hannah said this very calmly, as if speaking to a small child.

"Him, now ... he's a Gypsy. You can tell by the fire in his playing,” she said, gesturing towards the man playing jazz music with his group at the back of the small café, the two intact fingers of his left hand flying up and down the fretboard of his Selmer guitar, a lit cigarette dangling precariously from his lower lip.

“HE has dispensation from the Kommandant," the German officer said with a wry smile.
"A privilege which does not extend to you, I'm afraid. Gypsy, Arab, Jew, whatever you are, it makes not one bit of difference,” he continued, his smile turning quite obviously evil now.
“You are all the same; you are all Untermenschen and we are better off without you in Germany, or here for that matter,” the man said as his black-uniformed fellow soldiers nodded in agreement.

“I think we should be going,” Kat said to Hannah, pointedly ignoring not just the man’s comments but his entire presence.
“I need some fresh air.”
She picked up her fur coat and casually threw some coins on the table for the waiter.

The man in the light grey suit across from her rose gingerly as if in some pain and said softly, “It’s almost time anyway.”

He donned his own hat and coat and wrapped his woolen scarf around his face as Hannah got up from her side of the table.
She put on her short leather jacket and then the three of them left the café.

“Things certainly seem to have gone downhill since the last time I was here,” Kat said with a grim smile.
“For a second, I really did think that you were about to rip that fellow’s head off right there in full view of everyone ... not that he didn’t deserve it.”

“Believe me, I was sorely tempted,” Hannah answered tersely, “but we really shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves right now if we can help it."

“Unfortunately, it seems we’ve already done that,” the man in the light grey suit said, his slight accent betraying his Czech origin as he glanced behind him.
“We’re being followed."

“Calm down, Victor,” Kat said.
“It’s probably just a total coincidence that all of those fellows left the bar shortly after we did, and that they happen to be heading in the very same direction as we are.”

She smiled again as she said that last bit though.
Kat loved to fight, and the more opponents there were the happier she was about it.
At the moment, the odds were about four to one.

“Don’t worry, Victor,” Hannah said quietly.
“We’ve got this covered; I doubt that even they are stupid enough to try anything here in the middle of the street, but we certainly don’t want to lead them to where we’re going.”

“Divide and conquer?” Kat asked with an eager grin.

“That sounds like a plan," Hannah replied.
"Victor, you stay with me."

At the next corner, Kat turned to the left, while Hannah and Victor went right.
Just as expected the group following them split in half, with six of them shadowing Hannah and Victor and the rest going after Kat.

“Are you quite sure that your friend will be alright?” Victor asked.
“There certainly are a lot of them.”

“Actually, I feel sorry for them,” Hannah replied with another grim smile.
“If they make the mistake of starting anything with her, they won’t live to see the dawn.”

“Well, it looks as if the ones behind us are getting closer.”

Hannah spotted an dark alleyway off to the side of the narrow cobblestoned street they now found themselves on.

“This is as good a place as any,” she said. “Come on, in you go!”

She gave Victor a bit of a shove to move him further back into the alley before she entered it herself.
Then she stood in front of him, almost fully concealed in the darkness.

“You probably shouldn’t watch this,” she whispered to the man standing behind her.

================================================================

“Hey, you!” the fat man said. “I didn’t like your friend’s tone back there, and I don’t like you either. I think we’re going to have to teach you a lesson.”

“The feeling is mutual, I assure you,” Hannah said calmly, “but you can still walk away from this without getting hurt.”

“And who would be doing the hurting, might I ask?”
The fat man guffawed.
"Certainly not that coward hiding behind you like a frightened little boy behind his mother’s skirt!”

The entire group of uniformed men had a good laugh at that while Victor bristled and took a step forward, his jaw set and his fists clenched now.

“It is you who are the cowards!” he replied.
“Look at you, six of you threatening a single man and a woman! I will fight any one of you that you care to choose, one on one.”

Hannah held him back easily with one arm though.
“Yes, they are cowards, completely without honour. I can read what is in their hearts and minds even without trying,” she said softly.
“They mean to do us harm. So be it.”

Turning to the fat man once more, she said softly, "It's your funeral ..."

====================================================

TKoD
Ch. 31 (cont'd)

https://soundcloud.com/frostyjr2%2Fits-your-funeral-22124-2231

With an eerie rustling sound she disappeared from in front of the fat man and his companions, leaving them bewildered and confused for an instant, until she reappeared behind them blocking their exit from the alley.

She reached out to the nearest one and with a razor sharp fingernail she smoothly sliced through his jugular vein.
Warm blood spurted violently from the wound, staining his black uniform and steaming as it hit the cold ground below.

As he fell to his knees, clutching at his throat, the next man had barely registered what was happening before Hannah had killed him as well, two fingernails penetrating cleanly into his brain straight through his eye sockets.

She rapidly withdrew her fingers, the gory remains of his eyeballs on them like chunks of meat on a skewer before she sharply flicked her hands to send them flying off in the direction of her next victim.

Pulling that one in towards her, she squeezed his throat and effortlessly crushed his windpipe with one hand before dropping him to the blood-stained ground.

Turning rapidly to the next man, she incapacitated him with a rapid kick to the kneecap, then with a quick stab of her hand she penetrated his chest and punctured his heart as if it were a needle piercing a toy balloon.
When she withdrew her hand, it was totally dripping with blood and gore.

All of this had taken mere seconds and as the fat man now fully realized what had happened to his friends, his shock turned to sheer stark raving terror.

Finally, Hannah paused, licked her bloody fingertips and looked straight at him.

"MMMMmmm, tasty," she said, her smile exposing her extended fangs.
“You were saying?” Hannah asked the fat man, who was now gibbering, drooling, and shaking like a leaf, his reason gone missing.
“Oh, right ... I’m ready for that lesson now, teacher,” she said sarcastically.

As she drew closer to him, the fat man began to urinate uncontrollably, his fear having gotten the better of his bladder.
As a large wet spot spread over the front of his trousers and an acrid yellow pool formed at his feet, Hannah quite casually tore his head off.

Blood gushed out like a fountain, splattering over his friends as his own lifeless body joined theirs on the ground.

Now only a single figure remained standing between Hannah and Victor.

Hannah approached him, and at first he raised his fists as if to try to fight her, despite everything he had witnessed.
Then, realizing how futile the gesture was, he lowered his hands and his head and simply waited silently, resigned to his fate.

His face was in shadow, hidden by the darkness and the black cap he wore on his head.

Hannah gently cupped his chin with her hand and raised his head so as to look directly into his blue eyes.
She could find no trace of evil there or in his heart, despite his uniform.

He was hardly more than a young boy, probably about seventeen at the most; a new recruit, no doubt.

" A minnow swimming with the sharks," Hannah said, and laughed softly.
"You'd best run along now boy, and be careful who you associate with in the future. It could cost you dearly next time."

She stepped aside to let him pass but still couldn't resist giving he boya good swift kick in his backside as he ran by her, his tears falling now either from shame or perhaps from joy at his good fortune to have survived an encounter with this dark avenging angel of death.

Hannah started to walk away from the scattered bodies laying on the ground, not deigning to feed from such a tainted source no matter how much blood there was available for the taking.
Even her finger-licking bit had been purely for effect, and she spat now to rid herself of any trace of their blood as her fangs retracted again.

“My God, what are you?” Victor cried as he turned from the bodies laying on the ground towards Hannah, shaking from head to toe himself now that the rush of adrenaline coursing through him was subsiding.

“What I am doesn’t really matter. Just be glad that I’m on your side, my friend,” Hannah replied, smiling grimly once again.


==========================================================

TKoD
Ch. 31 - Occupied Paris Blues (interlude)

“Is that going to be a problem?” Hannah asked as she wiped her hands as clean as possible before tossing her handkerchief into a nearby trash can.

She and Victor had just left the alleyway and five dead bodies in SS uniforms behind them.

“Well, the Nazis are well known for reprisals for attacks on military personnel, so it might be better if those bodies weren’t found.” Victor replied.
“As soon as we get to where we’re going they can contact a clean-up crew that will make sure that those bodies disappear without a trace. Those men will be just a few more German soldiers gone AWOL after a trip to Paris.”

After his initial shock, Victor actually seemed to be taking things pretty well.

It’s not every day that one’s most basic assumptions as to the nature of existence are challenged; not only to discover that the stories about vampires aren’t mere works of fiction, but that you are actually associating with not just one but two of them at that very moment …
yes, that could be a rather disturbing thought, but once he got past a few inevitable moments of fear, Victor had realized that if either Hannah or Kat had wanted to harm him, he would have been dead long ago.

The Resistance needed capable fighters, no matter what their origins might be, and at least one of these two women had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt just how capable she was …
she had just killed five soldiers in less than a minute and a half using nothing but her bare hands, for God’s sake, and not a scratch on her!

As the two of them continued along the main thoroughfare, they were joined by Kat now.

“How did it go for you?” she asked Hannah with a smile, although she could already guess the answer from the other vampire’s still somewhat blood-stained hands.

“About as expected,” Hannah replied.
“At least I was able to let one out of the six go free. Were yours as stupid as ours?”

“Probably even more so, actually. I gave them the slip by first leading them into an alley and then teleporting out of there,” Kat laughed.
“I’m sure they were all quite confused when their intended victim simply vanished without a trace!”

“Well, that’s a bit of a change for you, isn’t it? I was sure that there would be some more dead bodies somewhere that we’d need to take care of,” Hannah replied with a smile.

“I thought you might have to fight seeing as how you didn’t really have the easy teleportation option with Victor there. I knew you wouldn’t leave him behind, and that there would be enough bodies to deal with after that without me making any more contributions to the cause … no matter how much I would have enjoyed it,” Kat said, grinning back at Hannah now.
“Just as long as I get the next ones, OK?”

‘Once a gladiatrix, always a gladiatrix,’ Hannah thought, laughing to herself.

“Not a problem,” she said, pulling on a pair of gloves to conceal her hands until she could wash off the last traces of blood from them.

They took the Metro now to the end of the line at Porte de Vanves and walked up the steep hill, finally arriving at the y-shaped junction of three cobblestone paved streets.

There was a rather nondescript café located there, and at this hour the only clients inside were a few night labourers who had finished up their shift and come in for a glass of cheap red wine.

As the odd trio entered the smoke-filled café, shaking off the night's cold and the damp air the assembled working men barely looked up from their drinks, but the waiter behind the bar at the back nodded at Victor, raised the leaf and gestured for them to head to the back room.

“Ils sont tous là déja; On vous attend,” he said to Victor with a small smile.

=======================================================

TKoD

Ch. 31 - Occupied Paris Blues, 2nd chorus

The meeting hadn’t gone so well at first.

In the smoke-filled back room, everyone had begun talking at once, complaining about the Vichy government, various Nazi collaborators, and anything else they weren’t happy with at the moment.

Rather than calling for silence, Victor had cleverly allowed this to play out until it seemed the venting was done with and then he had risen from where he had sat quietly waiting for the right moment to give one of his typically rousing speeches, calling for everyone to unite in the common cause of throwing off the Nazi yoke in the name of freedom.

He spoke of those who were living in much worse conditions than the group assembled in the café: the imprisoned intellectuals and radicals, deported Jews and gypsies in concentration camps, and the brave citizens of London who were even now enduring nightly bombings.

Then, he spoke of the responsibility each of them had to work together and do their part.

When he had finished, Kat leaned over towards Hannah and said, “Now I know why the Nazis consider him so dangerous. Nothing is more powerful than an idea, and the way he has of presenting his ideas will unite people and move them to action.”

Just as she said that, the waiter rushed in.

“Vingt-Deux! Les flics arrivent, j’ai été prévenu par un copain à la préfecture!"

Unfortunately, the warning had come with little advance, and so as the various members of the resistance cell were now hurriedly exiting the café they were all swept up ‘en rafale’ and herded into the back of a waiting police wagon.

Rather than try to leave the café, Hannah, Kat, and Victor instead had waited in the back storage room until everyone else was gone.
Then Kat looked at Hannah and said, “You have to do it now, we have no choice."

Hannah turned to Victor.
“I’m very sorry; this is going to hurt … a lot … but it’s the only way to get you to safety.”

She put her arms around him, nodded to Kat, and then the three of them teleported out of the back room of the café into a deserted dead end side street a few blocks away that the two vampiresses had chosen in advance as a fallback/rally point.

The searing pain that wracked Victor’s body now made his time under the tender care and supervision of the Gestapo seem like a vacation.
He could barely stand, and had to be supported for a moment by both Kat and Hannah before he was able to take a few tentative steps.

Hannah was in a fair amount of pain herself.
Any time you teleported, it was rough on your nervous system.
If you tried to take anyone else with you, the extreme effort required to both move the increased load and keep them as a separate entity when you rematerialized was enough to discourage the practice in any but the most dire situations.

There was always a risk; just like trying to carry a package that was almost too heavy for you, except that if you dropped this 'package', that person could either end up in some sort of limbo, trapped forever and unable to get back, or their essence might be forever merged with your own and you would become some composite of both personalities, a new entity comprised of random various elements of the two merged beings.

Not good …

“It’s not safe for you to stay here in Paris any longer, Victor; the police and the Gestapo are getting too close. The fact that they raided that meeting means that somebody who knows talked, and with the rest of them now in Gestapo hands, it’s only a matter of time before the Nazis find you.”

“We’ll travel to unoccupied North Africa, Ilsa and I,” Victor said.
“From there, we should be able to make our way to Lisbon, and then from there to America.”

“That sounds like a good plan. We’ll accompany you back to the hotel to get Ilsa, then once you’ve packed a few things, we’ll take you to the airport.”

===================================================

The clerk at the airport didn’t make much of a fuss when two rain-soaked passengers showed up for the night flight to Casablanca at the last minute.
Hannah had made quite sure of that, using her vampire powers of persuasion to bend him to her will.

Instead, he quickly wrote out two tickets, simply saying, “Have a good flight,” as she handed him the money for the airfare before returning to his other paperwork as if nothing had happened.

Indeed, for him, nothing had ... at least, if questioned afterwards, he wouldn't remember a thing.

Hannah gave the tickets to Victor, and he shook her hand, saying, "It has been an honour to know the both of you."

"The honour is ours," Hannah replied. "Just keep fighting for what you know is right."

"I shall, have no fear. Thank you, for everything you have done for us," Victor said emphatically.

“Yes, thank you,” the lovely Norwegian woman accompanying him said to her softly.
“For everything.”

Even though her face was in shadow under the stylish hat she was wearing, it was quite obvious that she was exceptionally beautiful, as beautiful as any fashion model or star of the silver screen.

The cold rain was falling harder now.

Hannah and Kat watched the two of them as they hurried onto the plane; the propellers were already turning in time to the low rumble of the engines as Ilsa turned back to wave at them one last time, her slim figure just a backlit silhouette in the doorway before the uniformed stewardess ushered her inside and sealed the hatch.

As the airplane taxied down the black, rain-slicked runway and took off into the night, Kat turned to Hannah.

“I hope they’ll be alright.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will work out in the end. True love conquers all,” Hannah said with a smile.
“Just like it always does in the moving pictures.”


<TO BE CONTINUED>

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