CHAPTER 6
Cassia
Cassia hadn’t planned on going out on her first night in DC, but Gigi and Miranda hadn’t been of interest to her, and she could tell they were focused on the newest member of their group, whom they had just turned.
The woman had been in shock, as everyone was when they suddenly awoke craving human blood, but once Gigi and Miranda had shown her the joys of sucking straight from the vein from a willing human, she had been less in shock and had been more in the mood for something else after being temporarily sated in that way.
That was also normal, waking and craving sex as well as blood.
For vampires, those two things were linked in a way humans wouldn’t ever be able to comprehend.
Cassia had watched the three of them. She always enjoyed watching beautiful women give one another pleasure, but she had grown bored with it after an hour or so and had told them to carry on in her absence.
She was going out. She had looked up a few contacts whom she knew floated between cities in the Northeast, and after finding that one of them had opened a bar in the city not that long ago, she had decided to head over and see if he had any willing humans who were either ready to be sucked or turned.
There was always a human somewhere, done with their life, who was interested in becoming immortal, and if Cassia thought she could stand them for more than a minute, she considered turning them.
The bar looked tailor-made for that kind of crowd, with dark colors, soft but pounding music, and almost something like fog in the air.
When she arrived, she entered through the back to meet the owner, who told her about a woman she might be interested in.
She’d just arrived, and he could get her for Cassia.
If for nothing more than a nice meal, Cassia waited in the back and peered out into the bar, seeing him approach a beautiful woman whose eyes got big when he whispered in her ear.
Cassia watched the woman nod rapidly, which meant she would be too annoying to keep around.
She wouldn’t turn this one, but she could at least enjoy herself.
“Hi,” the woman said in an airy voice the instant she was in the back storage room alone with Cassia. “My name is–”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cassia interjected.
She didn’t plan on killing this human, but she also didn’t need to get to know her. Cassia had one need – well, maybe two right now – and while this woman might be able to help her with that, that didn’t mean Cassia planned on delivering her immortality in return.
“Okay.”
“I have a question for you,” Cassia said as she backed her up against a shelving unit holding various kinds of alcohol bottles and placed her hands territorially on the woman’s hips.
“Okay,” the woman repeated.
“Will you willingly give your blood to me?”
“Yes. Definitely,” the overly excited woman said with a quick nod again.
“Good girl,” Cassia said and tilted the woman’s head to the side. “I’m going to bite you here.” She dragged her fingers along the woman’s neck. “Do you have something to cover up?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl,” Cassia repeated before her fangs emerged. She licked them slowly and said, “Now, I’d also like to fuck you while I drink.”
“Oh,” the woman said when Cassia licked her neck as if she were licking salt before taking a shot.
“I won’t if you don’t want me to, but trust me when I tell you that the feeling you’ll get when you come is not one you will ever experience again, and you’ll always dream of it whenever that human boyfriend of yours tries to fuck you.”
The woman nodded rapidly as if she knew exactly what Cassia was talking about, and Cassia nearly laughed, but held it in. It wasn’t the first time she’d gotten this kind of reaction from a woman that she was about to deliver intense pleasure to, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“Lift your skirt for me and take off those already soaked panties. Let them fall to the floor.”
The woman in front of her complied quickly, as if she couldn’t wait for what was about to be done to her.
“How did you know I was wet?” she asked.
“Oh, sweetheart…” Cassia began. “I could smell you from your stool in the bar.”
“God,” the woman let out as Cassia entered her without preamble.
“Not quite,” Cassia replied and bit into her flesh.
She sucked and heard the sounds of her fingers thrusting into a tight, wet pussy. Outside of the sounds Iro made when she sucked straight from Cassia’s inner thigh, this was Cassia’s favorite sound.
“Oh, fuck,” the woman said.
Cassia sucked harder for a second, knowing not to take too much. The harder she sucked, the faster she would drain her, so she slowed down and focused on her fingers, thrusting harder and pressing her thumb to the woman’s clit.
“I’m… I’m coming!” the woman cried out faster than Cassia had predicted.
“Yes. Come for me,” she said and licked at the blood gathering at the base of the woman’s neck.
The woman continued to come loudly, and Cassia covered her mouth with her free hand because she didn’t need the rest of the bar to know what they were doing in here.
“You don’t want to get us caught, do you?” she said as she licked up the evidence and pressed her palm to the holes in the woman’s neck, letting her come down completely before she removed her hand from between her thighs. “There now. How do you feel?” she asked.
“Holy fuck,” the woman let out, leaning back against the shelves, while Cassia reached for a bottle of tequila.
She wasn’t much of a fan of the stuff, and this was the cheap kind, but it would do. She opened it and poured it directly on the woman’s neck. The woman hissed, and Cassia licked the spot.
“You’re delicious, by the way. The alcohol will help stop the bleeding.”
“God… That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had,” the woman told her.
“I know,” Cassia replied and took a long pull directly from the bottle. “Want some?”
The woman took it from her and took a long drink as well.
Cassia watched her neck as she held the bottle back.
She wanted to dig her teeth back into the flesh, grip this woman by her hip, and suck her dry, but she needed to be careful.
If she intended to stay in town, tonight was not the night to start leaving bodies, and while the woman did taste good, Cassia had no plans to turn her, predicting how annoying she would be and not having the patience for it.
“Now, cover yourself up and go straight home. You’ll want to drink some orange juice and get some rest,” she said and put her fingers into her mouth to suck. “Delicious,” she repeated on her way out of the room.
Heading toward the front of the bar, Cassia stopped in her tracks when she saw the woman she loved sitting in one of the booths, her hand on another woman’s neck, stroking her pulse point and staring deeply into her eyes.
Cassia was used to Iro having her breaks to explore the world, but she hadn’t ever needed that, perhaps because she’d done so much of her own exploring before Iro had even been born and then remade.
Iro had also more than enjoyed their time together for decades before requesting that first period of time apart.
It had been brief initially, and Iro had returned to her, but the requests had continued to come, and they’d been longer and longer nearly every time.
Now, Cassia was watching Iro lean into this woman, who looked like any other ordinary human on the planet, as if she wanted to devour her, but not in the same way Cassia had just devoured the woman in the storage room.
Knowing all Iro’s looks well, she could tell Iro wanted more than mere sex with this human.
Iro was, for some reason, enamored with this average girl.
“This just won’t do,” Cassia said to herself, shaking her head.
She didn’t want to watch anymore. Interrupting Iro now would only upset her, and Cassia didn’t want to deal with an upset Iro.
Besides, she loved when Iro returned to her after their breaks.
Iro was usually ravenous for her then, taking her in every way on every surface for several weeks before finally turning into the soulful poet Cassia had fallen in love with, sharing her new poetry with Cassia while they lay naked and sated by the fire or between lovemaking sessions.
She loved all sides of Iro, and she knew Iro hadn’t ever met anyone else who loved all of her.
As she watched Iro and the woman she was with stand, her fangs reemerged on their own accord when she saw Iro take the woman’s hand and entwine their fingers as if they belonged together.
“No, this simply will not do,” she said to herself again and left the bar.
◆◆◆
“What they don’t tell you about losing a child is that even after years, you still wait for them to come home from school.
You still expect them to come into the house and tell you about their day or ignore you and rush off to their rooms to do their homework or play video games,” the woman she was watching said before she broke down and cried.
Cassia sat in a chair at the back of the room.
She didn’t frequent support groups, but occasionally, she stopped by to see if there was anyone who might be interested in what she could offer.
Unsurprisingly, she found people at least every two out of ten times, but where it had used to be out of boredom, now she came for an entirely different reason.
It wasn’t to provide relief to suffering humans, but to grow her cause.
When the meeting had ended, and that same woman was hugging another woman and still crying at the memory of her lost son, Cassia waited until she was alone.
“Your story really touched me,” she stated once she and the grieving woman were outside on the sidewalk.
“I haven’t seen you in the meeting before,” the woman replied.
“It’s my first since I lost my Shelly,” she said, using the name she always tossed out for things like this.
“Daughter?”
“Yes. She was sixteen. Gone a month now.”
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said with a sniffle.
“How long has your son been gone?”
“A year tonight,” the woman replied.
“Does it get any easier?”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s a lie when they say that it does.
He is still dead because someone drank too much at a bar and drove home.
I’m still all alone. His father left after he died.
He couldn’t even stand to look at me. I couldn’t stand to look at him, either.
It’s all horrible.” The woman sighed before adding, “I’m sorry.
I’m sure that’s unhelpful, and you came here for support. ”
“I’m surprised I left my house today. Honestly, I have really been struggling, thinking there has to be a way out of this horrible pain.”
“We’ve all been there. I took pills a month ago. My sister found me, and I’m still, unfortunately, here without my son.”
“You wanted to end it?” Cassia asked her, finally getting somewhere.
“Most days, I still do.”
“What if I could help end the pain?”
“Excuse me?” the woman asked back.
Cassia looked around and saw that they were relatively alone.
“That anger you feel – you can use it. You can find the person who killed your son and use it against him. No one would be able to stop you. In fact, you can aim that anger at whomever you want, and when you’re ready, if you want to end it all, I’ll show you how.”
“I’m sorry, I should really get going,” the woman said, looking nervous now, which only pushed Cassia on.
“You know, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to convince anyone tonight.
I could’ve kept going until I got you to agree with me eventually, but I’m really tired, so I’m going to skip a few steps.
” Cassia took the woman’s hand in her own and added, “I’d apologize, but I don’t want to.
” She leaned in and whispered, “I don’t have to convince you at all, really.
I can take whatever I want whenever I want, but it’s more fun this way after all these years. ”
She bit down into the woman’s neck then, and just as the human was about to scream out, she covered her mouth with her hand.
“Good. Scream. I like making women scream.” She bit down again and sucked hard. “It’ll only hurt for a second.” She bit down into her wrist and shoved it into the woman’s mouth. “Yes, drink that. You’ll feel better.”
She licked the woman’s blood off her neck and moved her tongue over the woman’s bottom lip, leaving a trail of the woman’s own blood behind before she sucked her until she could no longer stand.
Then, Cassia removed her hand from the woman’s mouth, called for her driver to pick them up, tossed the woman into the back seat with her, and told the driver to take her to her rental house.
“Now, I can finish my meal,” she said and sucked the woman dry.