Big city

The sand was cool and the air moist from all the little sprinkles to keep the underground heat under control. Chance was busy greeting some senators and oh my, even the mayor was here. When he looked at the rows of people and seats filling up with more crowd at the door, he smiled. There might have been about four thousand people here, compared to their regular up to thousand. He was very pleased and proud of himself.

“Mayor Goodwin, sir,” he bowed his head at the man while he offered a cocky little smile to Missis Goodwin. She was about forty years younger than her husband and an adorable blond thing with long legs and tonight she wore a very short skirt. When she came down the stairs by her husbands side, the cloth got tangled between her legs and made many men swallow.

“Good evening, Mister Manning.” And the Mayor even shook Chance's hand. “Sit down, my dear,” he told her wife and she did, making the men behind her gasp as they got a glimpse of her underwear. Very, very adorable, a beautiful plaything, Beauty Queen of M106.

“How fares the Princess,” the Mayor also asked. “I've been longing to show her to Selma.”
His wife smiled and brushed a lock of golden hair behind her ear. Her breasts moved as she did it – it might have been why she did it, the little sexy thing. Chance knew that if he played his cards well he could win a way to her bed and hence into the highest quarters of this town. Chance Manning knew how to mix his business with his pleasure.

“She is very fine, sir,” Chance replied politely and smiled at him. Selma beamed. Her lips were pink, plump and glittery. Now she opened them a little and showed a sharp tip of curling tongue, licking over her lips for an instant. Every male of the specie just had to imagine that tongue going up and down their cocks and those lustrous lips sucking, sucking.

**

Paige sat on a small stool in a dark hallway. She wasn't feeling too good. Something was... missing. Something was in the air. She had a gut feeling, but the damn thing kept its mouth shut about what it was about. Her skin tingled, she actually felt... well, nervous.

She could smell the crowd, and there seemed to be awfully lot of them tonight. She could bet Chance was out there, groveling to the rich and important while trying to sneak his way into the cunts of their wives. Just the way Chance was, she couldn't really blame him. For a little lowlife with no name it was the only way to get out of the gutter, and since he was – objectively put – very nice looking and could put out some relatively good manners as well, then... Chance was a gigolo by nature, a pimp by nature and also a bastard capable of auctioning his own mother if he'd had one.

Paige never knew her mother. She had died when delivering her, so father had told her once. She'd also heard that father had been quite a different man when mum had been alive, but when she died and Paige had been born... He'd given it all up, he'd moved out of the city and began with that stupid commune thing. He'd waisted everything mum and he had been working for. They'd had decent jobs – he a delivery man and she a housekeeper for a werewolf friendly lady. Then again – she was just a woman, and maybe that was why they had managed to live in the city – because mum was part of it. Father feared it, she realized, and when mum had died, there was nothing to keep him there, so he left. Paige was brought up in the commune. Dandelion pack. She detested the name. Wasn't even a real flower, just some trash. And then they got the old rookies and other nolifers. Father seemed to be content, though never happy. But as soon as they moved out of the city they were condemned. They couldn't go back. And father kept preaching something about freedom and pride. Where the hell was his freedom? Paige had asked this from herself already at five and she never understood. They couldn't go anywhere, they were kept under government surveillance, they saw nothing – same faces from day to day, same old stories... They were living like rats in a cage, where was the pride in that, where was the freedom if they had deliberately given away last remnants of their human rights?

“We're not human, we're werewolves,” father taught. But mother had been human, and they were alive, father and she, they were not of the cursed undead kind, like vampires, and gosh, even vampires, especially vampires had more rights, because they took them. They didn't wait to be fed with leftovers from the city's table. But father preached of peace and continuance. What was there to continue? This miserable existence she so much resented?

She'd ran off a few days before her fifteenth birthday. Once he'd come after her, twice he'd sent some rookies, but she had told him to go, leave her alone, she was doing just fine, go, go back, don't get caught you silly man and no I am not going back to that pit. Here at least I have something, there I have nothing, no future, nothing.

The bell rang and woke her from her thoughts. Her skin tingled again. She pulled on her gloves and attached the claws. Clicks of metal were loud in still air. The arena was out there, waiting, and so was the crowd. She could feel them breathing, adjusting themselves on their seats, all eyes keen on the arena below.

The gate rose and she walked down the plank to the center of the arena. Sand was cool and gentle to her feet, the air moist of water and sweat, perfumes, thoughts. She noticed she was standing alone, with some of the crowd jeering, but most of them kinda... silent. They were all waiting for something. What could they be...

And then the gate opened on her opposite. She felt it before she saw it and the emotion crashed over her, so that she even lost balance for an instant and her legs swayed.

A werewolf, her mind rattled. A werewolf, a werewolf, a werewolf.
And what a werewolf it was...

The man that almost clumsily walked to the arena and up to her might have been in his forties. Then again, he could have been a good fifty years old. There was something very old and at the same time, diabolically young and playful in him, although he looked positively worn out and bored.

He was tall, and sturdy, with muscular build but not the one you could get from gym exercises. He had the muscles of an animal. Paige had never seen anyone resembling so much to an actual wolf. This one here was what all the myths were about, no genetic disease, but a wild beast. He cast his eyes slowly upon the crowd, and then at Paige. His eyes were a mixture of dark gray and brown. He didn't seem to notice anyone, just the nostrils of his big crooked nose moved.

He looked positively ugly with his eyes deep in their sockets, nose bent, too strong jaw, heavy lined face, brows curving over his eyes and lips a way too big for a man. Eyes got confused looking at such face and the rest was the same – just pieces of a puzzle thrown and scattered on the ground.

And then came the first whisper, then a second and then the jeering broke loose, but it was nothing like the shouts Paige had received. They loved her, but they were in awe and fear at this man as they whispered his name:

“Woland. The Old Devil. Woland.”


**

“Nonsense,” Enoch smirked. “You will not kill me. You cannot kill me. You can try, if you like. Here, have a knife.”
He offered Logan his old, familiar dagger by the hilt. “Go ahead.”
The young man stared at him. When invited so openly he got confused. But his rage was beyond any clear thinking, so he took the dagger and plunged....well, tried to plunge it into Enoch's heart. (He wasn't too good in anatomy, either, but it was the general direction.)
As his hand moved closer to the older vampire's naked chest he felt something he'd never felt before. It would have been difficult to describe, but it was very much akin to pain. He found he just couldn't move his hand any closer and he'd merely scratched the skin, sending a few drops of red trickling down Enoch's chest. It was like... it was like some strange energy field, bound with his very own mind. He couldn't kill or even wound Enoch, he just... couldn't, and the feeling was very much alike to the one... the one he'd felt when once after his own father had... when his father had taken him for extremely long time and violently, yes, he could recall it now, he'd been blocking it for so long, to survive, to survive, to survive, but now it was all here, and yes, he'd been taken, he'd been raped then and now again, and it was always happening, he'd tried to put an end to his misery but he'd been unable to, because... because he'd been too weak, and he was too weak again.

Logan found himself sitting on the edge of the luxurious bed, his chest heaving with no tears in his eyes, though they were burning.
“You're as bad... as bad,” he muttered at Enoch, trying to accuse him of... but what did it matter? Nobody here cared. He was just a plaything and there was nothing he could have done. He was helpless and he had no one to tell, because Hannah never believed her charming husband could do such a thing, and besides, why should she have listened to the complaints of a strange little boy, especially if the mentioned already took a way too much of her new husband's attention. She was jealous and wanted Logan away from Robert, but the father was too keen on his son, so it never happened. And Robert learned to make it up to her, so she'd complain less or not at all – he taught her to drink, introduced her to it, lured her in, so she was out of the way, the poor simple minded woman who was still regularly fucked by her husband and had no idea where else that big cock had been, no idea why a small boy was often found sitting and singing to himself, or just rocking himself, eyes shrouded.

Enoch was confused. This was something he had not expected. Shock, perhaps, but the lad seemed to be totally lost somewhere. He made to sit beside him, touched his shoulder and taking him by his chin, tried to make Logan look at him.

He saw the eyes of a terrified, helpless kid. Logan didn't even avert from his gaze, instead he kept looking into Enoch's eyes, scared and subservient, with none of that bold fire left. What had happened?

“What's wrong?” he asked, and felt silly. He shouldn't have cared. It was none of his business.
“Nothing, sir,” Logan replied almost immediately. It was what made it feel strange, Enoch found – that the lad didn't try and ignore him, he didn't move away, instead he stared back and responded like some poor trapped and tamed animal.
Slaves. Slaves the vampires had kept had had the same kind of behavior pattern once they'd been tamed enough. Once they were broken, they never ran away, even if you left the door open and when you told them to go, they would look at you, big eyes full of silent accusation, hate and love, because they had formed a freakish bond with their captors. It had horrified Enoch, since he'd been very young, and he'd never liked it. It seemed... unnatural. But then again, he'd been very inexperienced. Still, he preferred to hunt his prey and kill them rather than collect them, break them and make it appear as a normal situation when it was not.
Vampirism was not a normal state of nature. They were an abomination of the natural order and whether they liked it or not, it would remain thus. Of course, these were the beliefs Enoch wouldn't have preached out loud, he was too smart for that, but he did find himself disgusted by those who spoke of the superiority of vampires as a race. They were NOT a race, but the cursed, mutated part of the mankind. They were not born as vampires, they were born as humans and could be turned, though they couldn't be unturned. Hence – not a race.

Bah. He didn't feel like thinking of it right now, so why the hell was he?
He looked at the boy and felt he'd gone wrong with him. It was Grace's fault, he growled. He'd gone pretty much against his principles just to get even with her, and by what he knew, she hadn't even cared, so the boy was useless to him. He might as well kill him. Perhaps he should? It didn't seem as if something good would come of this situation anyway. The boy was a weakling, with perhaps some inner strength, but it had been broken, and now he was this rag doll. Enoch didn't even feel like sleeping with him. He didn't like raping, and taking this one would have been something worse. He could just imagine that the boy would have let him do just about anything and when he would tell him to perform this or that action, he'd do it with the same dead look.

The only thing he could not understand was what happened. There had been passion, and hatred, and all of a sudden it was all gone and he had a rag doll in his bed. Fuck!
He found he had no idea what to do with Logan.

And then the lad snapped out of it, at least partially, and asked:
“What do you wish to do with me now, sir?”
It was polite, and perhaps submissive, but it had more life in it, or so it seemed to Enoch.
The old vampire shrugged.
“Let you sleep would be wise. You have been fed, so you won't be hungry for some time now. You should sleep. Your mind is much outworn, and so is your body. You need to rest.”

“Will you... do as you said,” Logan asked. “Keep me as your... lover?” He needed to know, so he asked.
A very strange question, very strange indeed.
“I'll think of it,” Enoch replied. “It depends on you, I think. Look, Logan. I am not as evil as you might think I am. I can be very reasonable with you, if only you understand a certain set of rules. I will not take you against your will.”

And you already have, Logan thought bitterly, you've made me into a vampire against my own will, hence you've raped my mortality, you've raped all of me, there's nothing left of my will since I cannot will myself NOT to be a vampire...

Enoch sighed. “Yes, I've done that. I can't say I'm sorry, because I am not. Besides, what is done is done and neither of us can alter it. The process of creating a new fledgling is irreversible. You are a vampire now, Logan, and you have to learn to live like one. You cannot quit being one, let me make that clear if it isn't already. Of course, you could try and find some hunter to kill you or starve to death, but I hardly think you have it in you. If you had wanted to die no matter what, you would have already done it. We both know that.

I confess that you have confused me. I do not fully grasp what you are and I think that is because you don't have much of the idea, either. You are much more than meets the eye, that I can be almost sure of. My instincts have not failed me. Just when I thought you'd been broken and I was ready to give up, you snapped out of it. Your life force seems to be very strong and stubborn.

So – what will it be – will you learn the ways of vampires now, or... There is no other option, actually. Sooner or later you will have to feed, and that will be the start of your path as a vampire. It is best you know what to do and why before you are forced upon it. That is my opinion of it, and I strongly recommend to follow my advice.”