Chastity
As A Rabbit Fears The Wolf
[This story is set in 1998, during the Evil Ernie: Vampire Vengeance storyline. Chastity has been captured by Purgatori, to be used as bait in a trap for Evil Ernie, and is now being held prisoner in the sewers of Los Angeles.]
God. It stinks down here. Like most vampires, I've spent my fair share of time in the sewers, using them to get around during the day, but I'll never get used to the smell.
I strain against the chains that hold me down atop this strange altar, but even my vampiric strength can't break them. A strength that is fading from hunger. I haven't fed in several nights.
A blood-red hand with black claws caresses my cheek. A shudder of revulsion passes through me at the touch.
"What is the matter, girl? Hundreds have died begging for my caress."
The voice is feminine, seductive and filled with malevolence. It also seems to hold genuine puzzlement at my reaction to her repulsive touch.
I decide to reply with a question of my own. "What . . . do you want with me?"
The creature steps into my view, still stroking my flesh with her claws. She is a vampire, but nothing like me. She is dressed in nothing but a black leather bikini and thigh-high boots that do nothing to cover her crimson flesh. Great bat-wings sprout from her back and a pair of horns protrudes from her temples. I have already learned her name - Purgatori.
"You are just a plaything. A pawn in my game. It's him I want. But there's something about you - something different."
"Ernie'll kick your red butt once he gets his hands on you!"
"I think not."
Ernie. Evil Ernie. My boyfriend, though he does little to acknowledge that fact, I know he is as attracted to me as I am to him. Probably because he's too busy killing everyone on the East Coast to bother with li'l ol' me.
"You have considerable power for one so young." Purgatori grasps my head in both hands and gazes into my eyes. "You are undetectable to other vampires. Curious . . ."
I feel Purgatori's powerful telepathic powers slice into my brain, unlocking my memories. It hurts.
"Don't . . . do . . . that . . ." I beg, tears starting to pour from my eyes.
Purgatori just grins. "Open your mind to me . . ."
********************************************************
With brutal force, Purgatori's mind-probe makes me re-live my past as though I am there again. Purgatori savours the pain I feel, as I am once again molested by my father. At the age of 17, in 1976, I am forced to run away from his cruelty, to England, where I seek out a career as an actress. Purgatori skims over the satisfaction I find in getting caught up in the punk movement, and in the happiness I feel upon meeting Billy, my boyfriend and lead singer of the Nobs. The probe slows down and relishes my agony as I am attacked and turned by a sloppy old vampire named Farley.
Through the probe, I re-live my training under the Countess in the arts of assassination, only to learn later that I am being used as a weapon in her war against the vampire council. Through betrayal, I break free of her control and decide to make my own way in the world.
After returning to Ohio to exact revenge on my father, I meet up with Billy in New York, in 1980. It isn't long before he learns of my vampirism, and he breaks up with me, unable to cope with my nature.
Hurting for cash, I am hired by the vampire council to assassinate Jade, a powerful oriental vampire. I barely escape with my life. I sense that Purgatori is impressed that I accomplished even that much. Jade is her blood-daughter and almost as ancient as she is.
The mind-probe skims over my other adventures, as they hold no interest for Purgatori. However, the probe slows down again about two years after my battle with Jade, as Purgatori senses a memory filled with great pain and torment is approaching, and she wishes to savour it.
In 1982, I catch a Nobs concert in San Francisco. I go backstage, hoping to meet Billy and catch up with him. The delight on his face when he sees me is a joy to behold. He tells me that there's never been anyone else since we broke up. He's come to terms with what I am, and wants to be with me, only me.
I'm happier than I have ever been in my life. I spend the next few weeks as his girlfriend and I am so happy.
Then, during a break in a sell-out gig, while Billy and I are spending some quality time together backstage, performing filthy sex acts on one another, a lunatic with a gun bursts in and shoots us both. Consumed with rage, I get up and break his neck. But it is too late for Billy. Having spent 5 years as a professional assassin, I know a fatal wound when I see one.
I hold Billy in my arms, sobbing and begging him not to leave me. Billy tells me that he doesn't want to, that he would do anything to stay with me. Heart breaking, I ask him if he really means it, and he tells me that he does.
So I allow the change to come over me. My fangs lengthen and my vision shifts into another spectrum. I sink my fangs as gently as I can into his throat and drain his jugular vein, careful to leave just enough behind to leave him on the verge of death. I then open the vein on my wrist with a sharp nail and bring it to my Billy's lips.
He drinks, and a powerful feeling of raw intimacy washes over me. He takes not only my blood but my essence into him, and we become connected like never before. Eventually, after what seems an eternity, he stops drinking and sinks into oblivion.
He appears dead. His flesh is cold and he no longer breathes. But I am connected to him now, and I know that he will come back as a child of the night. Still, no one has come. The noise of the concert drowned out the gunshots and nobody would disturb Billy and me while we're together. Taking my opportunity, I sling Billy's corpse over my shoulder and escape into the night, leaving the body of the assassin to be discovered by the rest of the band.
I bring Billy to a hideout I have nearby and wait for him to awaken. The next night, he does. He awakens and he is furious with me. He says that I should have let him die, that I had no right to loose another bloodsucker on the world. I plead with him, telling him I had no choice, that I couldn't bear to lose him. Besides, he practically begged me to save him.
Despite his initial anger, he soon calms down and comes to terms with what has happened to him. He asks me to show him what it is to be a vampire, and I am more than willing.
We spend the next few years together, hunting together, living together. The Nobs disbanded after Billy's disappearance, and now I am all he has left. We are secretive; careful never to kill those we feed upon, never letting them see our faces. But not careful enough.
One day, in 1985, as we lounge together in bed, a group of human vampire hunters burst in. I fight as hard as I can, but they are prepared and I am sleepy. Still, I manage to keep them at bay.
But there are too many of them. While I am fighting for my unlife, Billy is quickly overpowered and held down on the bed. He has never received any of the combat training that I had. I never felt the need to teach him.
I fight desperately to reach my Billy in time but there's nothing I can do. I am forced to watch, horrified, as they stake him through the heart and cut off his head with a machete.
Screaming, I redouble my efforts to kill them but my rage makes me careless, and they almost succeed in killing me too. In the end, I am left with no choice but to flee, grabbing up my combat gear and escaping through a window into a dark alley. They give chase, but I lose them by vanishing into the sewers.
Burning for revenge, I contact the vampire council for information on these hunters. Led by a man called Edward, who lost his brother to a nest of street vamps, they were formed to ruthlessly hunt and kill vampires. The council, it turns out, doesn't consider them a threat and barely bothers to keep them under observation. They are considered amateurs and unimportant.
Nevertheless, the council gives me the information I need on their members, namely their names and addresses.
Over the next few weeks, I hunt them down, one by one, and ruthlessly kill them all. I drain them of al their blood, and as each one screams in my arms, all I hear is the screaming of my beloved Billy.
I save their leader, Edward, for last. I break into his house and wait in his study for him. Every night, according to the pattern I had observed as I watched him, he spends an hour in this study just before retiring to bed. Vampire hunting, as he had cleverly learned, is a day job.
He sits down at his desk, and I grab him round the throat from behind. I could kill him so easily but I want him to suffer. So I spend the next hour beating the crap out of him, demolishing his study with his body.
Eventually, when it is clear he can take no more, I hold him up against a wall and slash open the arteries in his throat. I don't even bother to drink his blood, just grinning into his eyes while allowing his blood to wash all over my face.
All too soon, he is dead and I drop his corpse to the floor. I turn to leave, and I see them. Standing, frozen in horror in the doorway, is a woman and a small boy.
I remembered reading in my report from the council on Edward that he had a wife and a ten-year-old son. This must be them.
I didn't even stop to think. All I could feel was rage and a burning lust for blood.
Leaping forward, I grab the woman and throw her to the floor. I sink my fangs into her throat and drain her dry. While I drink, I am overcome with feelings I haven't felt since the night I killed Farley, my sire. I feel a bloodlust so intense I couldn't stop drinking if I wanted to. I feel a sexual passion that no act of coupling could satisfy, causing me to fondle her breasts and dry-hump her thighs even while I slurp at her throat.
She dies quickly, and I look up to see her child sobbing in a corner. My thirst hasn't been quenched. I don't think it will ever be quenched. I crawl towards the boy. He doesn't move. He doesn't make a sound as I tip his head back and bite into his throat.
I remember how I felt as a child, when my father snuck into my room at night, how dirty I felt. As I drain the boy, while I hold his crotch and moan in pleasure, I feel that way again. Only, for the first time, I find myself liking that feeling.
I leave the house burning behind me and disappear into the night. For the first time, I have killed innocent people. A woman and a helpless child.
And it feels so good.
I now feel that I know my destiny. I am a vampire. A predator of humanity. A drinker of blood. For years I have tried to deny my nature. Now I embrace it. Now the humans will fear me, as a rabbit fears the wolf.
For the rest of the decade, I spend my time hunting and killing humans, taking pleasure in each death, getting off on each murder. I return to supporting myself with a career as an assassin, only taking jobs that appear challenging and profitable.
In 1992, the psycho plague breaks out, laying waste to the entire East Coast. In 1995, I arrive in the ruins of New York, where I am hired by a trio of ancient vampires to destroy Evil Ernie, the instigator of the psycho plague. I accept the job, unaware of the Evil One's true power.
I catch up with the Evil One and we fight. I hit him with everything I have, and he just laughs it off. He quickly overpowers me and rams a stake through my heart, leaving me for dead. Fortunately, he is unaware that my invulnerability to being staked is just one of my unique abilities.
Awed by his power, I find myself drawn to him. Two years later, I catch up with him again in New Jersey, where we begin a relationship together. Before I even know what's happening, I'm caught up in his quest for world-wide Megadeath. Unlike me, Ernie doesn't need the living and actively wants to kill every last one of them. I try to stop him, but fail and watch helplessly as he launches over a dozen nukes from a military base in Atlanta. Millions are killed and he just laughs as the world comes one step closer to World War III.
Despite everything, I still love him and if I'm going to see the end of the world. It'll be by his side. We hole up in Kentucky while Ernie plans his next move. It's there, during a military attack on Ernie, that Purgatori appears and captures me. The last thing I see, as I am obscured in a cloud of blood, is Ernie slaughtering the military strike force.
**************************************************************
I awake from the mind-probe, sobbing. I am horrified. What have I done? Being forced to re-live my life, being there again, experiencing those feelings again, has forced me to reconnect with the humanity I had lost for so long. How could I have been so cold? So cruel and evil?
Never again! I won't be like that again!
Purgatori releases me from my chains and, still having a use for me, offers me a helpless human to feed upon. I refuse, so Purgatori kills her and feeds me her blood in a goblet. I despise myself for my weakness.
It isn't long before Purgatori springs her trap for Evil Ernie, but she underestimates him and he drives her off and saves me.
After that, I carefully break up with Ernie. I offer him some excuses about needing to be around the living, but they're not true. I make sure not to let him know that I've learned how to care again, because I know that he'll rip me in two if he learns of such weakness.
He lets me go. I can see that he cares about me, but his love is reserved for just one woman.
So I leave. I would stop him if I could. He wants to destroy the world. I should try to stop him, because what he's doing is wrong, evil.
But I can't.
Because I love him.
Because I'm scared of him.
God help me, I love him so much and I am so scared of him.
As A Rabbit Fears The Wolf
[This story is set in 1998, during the Evil Ernie: Vampire Vengeance storyline. Chastity has been captured by Purgatori, to be used as bait in a trap for Evil Ernie, and is now being held prisoner in the sewers of Los Angeles.]
God. It stinks down here. Like most vampires, I've spent my fair share of time in the sewers, using them to get around during the day, but I'll never get used to the smell.
I strain against the chains that hold me down atop this strange altar, but even my vampiric strength can't break them. A strength that is fading from hunger. I haven't fed in several nights.
A blood-red hand with black claws caresses my cheek. A shudder of revulsion passes through me at the touch.
"What is the matter, girl? Hundreds have died begging for my caress."
The voice is feminine, seductive and filled with malevolence. It also seems to hold genuine puzzlement at my reaction to her repulsive touch.
I decide to reply with a question of my own. "What . . . do you want with me?"
The creature steps into my view, still stroking my flesh with her claws. She is a vampire, but nothing like me. She is dressed in nothing but a black leather bikini and thigh-high boots that do nothing to cover her crimson flesh. Great bat-wings sprout from her back and a pair of horns protrudes from her temples. I have already learned her name - Purgatori.
"You are just a plaything. A pawn in my game. It's him I want. But there's something about you - something different."
"Ernie'll kick your red butt once he gets his hands on you!"
"I think not."
Ernie. Evil Ernie. My boyfriend, though he does little to acknowledge that fact, I know he is as attracted to me as I am to him. Probably because he's too busy killing everyone on the East Coast to bother with li'l ol' me.
"You have considerable power for one so young." Purgatori grasps my head in both hands and gazes into my eyes. "You are undetectable to other vampires. Curious . . ."
I feel Purgatori's powerful telepathic powers slice into my brain, unlocking my memories. It hurts.
"Don't . . . do . . . that . . ." I beg, tears starting to pour from my eyes.
Purgatori just grins. "Open your mind to me . . ."
********************************************************
With brutal force, Purgatori's mind-probe makes me re-live my past as though I am there again. Purgatori savours the pain I feel, as I am once again molested by my father. At the age of 17, in 1976, I am forced to run away from his cruelty, to England, where I seek out a career as an actress. Purgatori skims over the satisfaction I find in getting caught up in the punk movement, and in the happiness I feel upon meeting Billy, my boyfriend and lead singer of the Nobs. The probe slows down and relishes my agony as I am attacked and turned by a sloppy old vampire named Farley.
Through the probe, I re-live my training under the Countess in the arts of assassination, only to learn later that I am being used as a weapon in her war against the vampire council. Through betrayal, I break free of her control and decide to make my own way in the world.
After returning to Ohio to exact revenge on my father, I meet up with Billy in New York, in 1980. It isn't long before he learns of my vampirism, and he breaks up with me, unable to cope with my nature.
Hurting for cash, I am hired by the vampire council to assassinate Jade, a powerful oriental vampire. I barely escape with my life. I sense that Purgatori is impressed that I accomplished even that much. Jade is her blood-daughter and almost as ancient as she is.
The mind-probe skims over my other adventures, as they hold no interest for Purgatori. However, the probe slows down again about two years after my battle with Jade, as Purgatori senses a memory filled with great pain and torment is approaching, and she wishes to savour it.
In 1982, I catch a Nobs concert in San Francisco. I go backstage, hoping to meet Billy and catch up with him. The delight on his face when he sees me is a joy to behold. He tells me that there's never been anyone else since we broke up. He's come to terms with what I am, and wants to be with me, only me.
I'm happier than I have ever been in my life. I spend the next few weeks as his girlfriend and I am so happy.
Then, during a break in a sell-out gig, while Billy and I are spending some quality time together backstage, performing filthy sex acts on one another, a lunatic with a gun bursts in and shoots us both. Consumed with rage, I get up and break his neck. But it is too late for Billy. Having spent 5 years as a professional assassin, I know a fatal wound when I see one.
I hold Billy in my arms, sobbing and begging him not to leave me. Billy tells me that he doesn't want to, that he would do anything to stay with me. Heart breaking, I ask him if he really means it, and he tells me that he does.
So I allow the change to come over me. My fangs lengthen and my vision shifts into another spectrum. I sink my fangs as gently as I can into his throat and drain his jugular vein, careful to leave just enough behind to leave him on the verge of death. I then open the vein on my wrist with a sharp nail and bring it to my Billy's lips.
He drinks, and a powerful feeling of raw intimacy washes over me. He takes not only my blood but my essence into him, and we become connected like never before. Eventually, after what seems an eternity, he stops drinking and sinks into oblivion.
He appears dead. His flesh is cold and he no longer breathes. But I am connected to him now, and I know that he will come back as a child of the night. Still, no one has come. The noise of the concert drowned out the gunshots and nobody would disturb Billy and me while we're together. Taking my opportunity, I sling Billy's corpse over my shoulder and escape into the night, leaving the body of the assassin to be discovered by the rest of the band.
I bring Billy to a hideout I have nearby and wait for him to awaken. The next night, he does. He awakens and he is furious with me. He says that I should have let him die, that I had no right to loose another bloodsucker on the world. I plead with him, telling him I had no choice, that I couldn't bear to lose him. Besides, he practically begged me to save him.
Despite his initial anger, he soon calms down and comes to terms with what has happened to him. He asks me to show him what it is to be a vampire, and I am more than willing.
We spend the next few years together, hunting together, living together. The Nobs disbanded after Billy's disappearance, and now I am all he has left. We are secretive; careful never to kill those we feed upon, never letting them see our faces. But not careful enough.
One day, in 1985, as we lounge together in bed, a group of human vampire hunters burst in. I fight as hard as I can, but they are prepared and I am sleepy. Still, I manage to keep them at bay.
But there are too many of them. While I am fighting for my unlife, Billy is quickly overpowered and held down on the bed. He has never received any of the combat training that I had. I never felt the need to teach him.
I fight desperately to reach my Billy in time but there's nothing I can do. I am forced to watch, horrified, as they stake him through the heart and cut off his head with a machete.
Screaming, I redouble my efforts to kill them but my rage makes me careless, and they almost succeed in killing me too. In the end, I am left with no choice but to flee, grabbing up my combat gear and escaping through a window into a dark alley. They give chase, but I lose them by vanishing into the sewers.
Burning for revenge, I contact the vampire council for information on these hunters. Led by a man called Edward, who lost his brother to a nest of street vamps, they were formed to ruthlessly hunt and kill vampires. The council, it turns out, doesn't consider them a threat and barely bothers to keep them under observation. They are considered amateurs and unimportant.
Nevertheless, the council gives me the information I need on their members, namely their names and addresses.
Over the next few weeks, I hunt them down, one by one, and ruthlessly kill them all. I drain them of al their blood, and as each one screams in my arms, all I hear is the screaming of my beloved Billy.
I save their leader, Edward, for last. I break into his house and wait in his study for him. Every night, according to the pattern I had observed as I watched him, he spends an hour in this study just before retiring to bed. Vampire hunting, as he had cleverly learned, is a day job.
He sits down at his desk, and I grab him round the throat from behind. I could kill him so easily but I want him to suffer. So I spend the next hour beating the crap out of him, demolishing his study with his body.
Eventually, when it is clear he can take no more, I hold him up against a wall and slash open the arteries in his throat. I don't even bother to drink his blood, just grinning into his eyes while allowing his blood to wash all over my face.
All too soon, he is dead and I drop his corpse to the floor. I turn to leave, and I see them. Standing, frozen in horror in the doorway, is a woman and a small boy.
I remembered reading in my report from the council on Edward that he had a wife and a ten-year-old son. This must be them.
I didn't even stop to think. All I could feel was rage and a burning lust for blood.
Leaping forward, I grab the woman and throw her to the floor. I sink my fangs into her throat and drain her dry. While I drink, I am overcome with feelings I haven't felt since the night I killed Farley, my sire. I feel a bloodlust so intense I couldn't stop drinking if I wanted to. I feel a sexual passion that no act of coupling could satisfy, causing me to fondle her breasts and dry-hump her thighs even while I slurp at her throat.
She dies quickly, and I look up to see her child sobbing in a corner. My thirst hasn't been quenched. I don't think it will ever be quenched. I crawl towards the boy. He doesn't move. He doesn't make a sound as I tip his head back and bite into his throat.
I remember how I felt as a child, when my father snuck into my room at night, how dirty I felt. As I drain the boy, while I hold his crotch and moan in pleasure, I feel that way again. Only, for the first time, I find myself liking that feeling.
I leave the house burning behind me and disappear into the night. For the first time, I have killed innocent people. A woman and a helpless child.
And it feels so good.
I now feel that I know my destiny. I am a vampire. A predator of humanity. A drinker of blood. For years I have tried to deny my nature. Now I embrace it. Now the humans will fear me, as a rabbit fears the wolf.
For the rest of the decade, I spend my time hunting and killing humans, taking pleasure in each death, getting off on each murder. I return to supporting myself with a career as an assassin, only taking jobs that appear challenging and profitable.
In 1992, the psycho plague breaks out, laying waste to the entire East Coast. In 1995, I arrive in the ruins of New York, where I am hired by a trio of ancient vampires to destroy Evil Ernie, the instigator of the psycho plague. I accept the job, unaware of the Evil One's true power.
I catch up with the Evil One and we fight. I hit him with everything I have, and he just laughs it off. He quickly overpowers me and rams a stake through my heart, leaving me for dead. Fortunately, he is unaware that my invulnerability to being staked is just one of my unique abilities.
Awed by his power, I find myself drawn to him. Two years later, I catch up with him again in New Jersey, where we begin a relationship together. Before I even know what's happening, I'm caught up in his quest for world-wide Megadeath. Unlike me, Ernie doesn't need the living and actively wants to kill every last one of them. I try to stop him, but fail and watch helplessly as he launches over a dozen nukes from a military base in Atlanta. Millions are killed and he just laughs as the world comes one step closer to World War III.
Despite everything, I still love him and if I'm going to see the end of the world. It'll be by his side. We hole up in Kentucky while Ernie plans his next move. It's there, during a military attack on Ernie, that Purgatori appears and captures me. The last thing I see, as I am obscured in a cloud of blood, is Ernie slaughtering the military strike force.
**************************************************************
I awake from the mind-probe, sobbing. I am horrified. What have I done? Being forced to re-live my life, being there again, experiencing those feelings again, has forced me to reconnect with the humanity I had lost for so long. How could I have been so cold? So cruel and evil?
Never again! I won't be like that again!
Purgatori releases me from my chains and, still having a use for me, offers me a helpless human to feed upon. I refuse, so Purgatori kills her and feeds me her blood in a goblet. I despise myself for my weakness.
It isn't long before Purgatori springs her trap for Evil Ernie, but she underestimates him and he drives her off and saves me.
After that, I carefully break up with Ernie. I offer him some excuses about needing to be around the living, but they're not true. I make sure not to let him know that I've learned how to care again, because I know that he'll rip me in two if he learns of such weakness.
He lets me go. I can see that he cares about me, but his love is reserved for just one woman.
So I leave. I would stop him if I could. He wants to destroy the world. I should try to stop him, because what he's doing is wrong, evil.
But I can't.
Because I love him.
Because I'm scared of him.
God help me, I love him so much and I am so scared of him.