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Introduction:

[For those who came in late:

In Part One (”A Modern Fantasy”), Marcilla was picked up by a mysterious entity in the guise of a middle aged man, who told her to turn an English girl called Enid. In the process of turning her, Marcilla fell in love with Enid.

In Part Two (“The Beginning"), Marcilla told Enid of how she was herself turned, as an eighteen year old in Styria in 1698.

We now pick up the story.]

______________________________________________

MARCILLA:

“You’re just trying too hard,” I said.

Enid huffed in frustration. Her face was flushed with effort and her straggly hair was plastered across her brow. “I’ll never be able to bloody do this.”

“Of course you will.” I looked at her, standing by the door, and pointed to the window. “You don’t have to hold your breath and will yourself to move there. All you have to do is feel yourself there. Let’s try it once more.”

Enid tried. She closed her eyes tight, clenched her fists, and thrust her head forward on her shoulders. Of course nothing happened. She stayed right where she was, with her back to the door.

I sighed. “Let’s take a break from that for today. We can start learning about wards again and how to beat them.”

“When you say ‘we’, you really mean ‘you,’ and we both know it.” Enid shook her head angrily. “It’s never going to work, Marcilla. I’m thick as two short planks. You’ll never be able to teach me anything.”

I got up from the chair by the little side table and walked to her. “Enid? Look at me.” Putting my finger under her chin, I tilted her head back until her eyes were looking into mine. They were shimmering with frustrated tears. I wanted to kiss those tears away. “You. Will. Be. Able. To. Learn. All. Of. This. I promise you.”

“But it’s not working!” Enid rubbed at her eyes angrily. “You do it so effortlessly and I can’t any of it, at all.”

“I’ve had over three centuries of practice,” I said, and kissed her forehead. “Forget it for now. Let’s talk about wards for a bit.” I drew her by the hand to the bed and we sat down side by side. “Now, how do we recognise a blood ward?”

She actually remembered what I’d told her about that, and I congratulated her with another kiss. “But,” she said, “why do I have to learn all this, I still don’t understand. You told me yourself that nobody thinks we exist anymore.”

“No.” I held up a hand. “I did not say that. I said almost nobody. There’s a difference. Hunters still exist, even though they’re so few we could go generations without meeting one, and they’re still dangerous. No, more dangerous than ever, since they have modern technology behind them. You need to know how to recognise and fight them.” I fell silent a minute. “I’ve had a few close runs with Hunters and it was only by good fortune that I survived some of those times.”

“They’ll have an easy time with me,” she muttered. “I’m stupid and useless.”

“You are not stupid and you are not useless.” I put my arm around her shoulders and immediately noticed how stiff her muscles were. She was under far more stress than she herself probably realised. “Let’s go soak in the tub,” I said. “I’ll put on the hot water. You need to relax.”

The tub was a welcome surprise. This hotel was old and the rooms small, but it had been converted from what had once been a mansion and though they’d broken up the big halls into smaller rooms, ours was connected with one of the old bathrooms, which was gigantic – almost as large as the bedroom itself – and had a huge bathtub set into a raised platform, not the tiny shower cubicle I’d been expecting.

We’d been cycling far too long, living out in the open far too long, and, though Enid was treating it all as a great adventure, I’d been more than glad to take a couple of days off in civilisation when the opportunity arose. A soak in a hot tub, a real bed, and sleep through the day from, well, not dawn, but at least mid-morning, to nightfall! What luxury!

“I? You’ve been doing all the work.” Enid pulled a face at me. “If anyone needs to relax, it’s you.”

“All right, we both need to relax. I admit it!” I went into the bathroom and turned on the hot tap, and as the tub filled, poured in both the tiny packets of complimentary bath salts I’d found in the bathroom cabinet. “Take your clothes off and get in here.”

The bathtub was nice and foaming pink with the salts when I slid in, lifted Enid on my lap, and positioned her so she was sitting between my thighs, her head against my shoulder and her back pressed against my breasts. I rubbed her shoulders and arms.

She made a noise like a contented cat. I chuckled.

“Feels good, does it?”

“Mmmmmm…” She turned her head far enough so I could lean over to kiss the corner of her mouth. “You’ll spoil me rotten, and then I’ll be rotten as well as useless.”

“Rotten things aren’t useless, they make great compost.” I released her arms and began running my hands up and down the sides of her torso, my fingertips rubbing in circles along the lines of her ribs. She sighed. “Imagine being compost and earthworms crawling on and inside you.”

“That’s horrible!”

“I don’t know. I like earthworms. It might be sexy, when they begin crawling between your legs Or here.” My hands, almost of their own volition, wandered to her chest, below and then sliding up to cradle her breasts. My fingers rubbed and tweaked her nipples. She moaned.

“Marcilla,” she said, “I love you.”

“Why?” I teased. “Because I do this?” My left hand tweaked her nipples while my right wandered down her abdomen. “Or because I do this?” My questing fingers found the soft folds of her labia. I ran my fingertips up and down them. “Well? What do you want next?”

“You know what I want,” she said.

“I don’t. Is it this?” I ran the insides of my feet up and down her shins. “Or this?” I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck. “Or this?” My fingertip twirled a circle on her clitoris. “Which?”

She shook and inadvertently ground her bottom against my hips. “You tart!”

“Your tart, and don’t you forget…” I paused. Since there were only the two of us in the hotel room, and the outer door was locked, I’d not bothered to close the bathroom door. Opposite the bathtub was the sink and over it the mirror, and from my position I could see some of the other room reflected. There was a man-shaped shadow on the wall over the bed. I couldn’t remember having seen it before.

I put my lips to Enid’s ear. “Stay here,” I murmured very softly. A murmur carries far less than the sibilants of a whisper. “Keep talking to me as though I’m still with you.”

“What…?” she began.

“Don’t argue,” I told her. “Do it.” Slipping noiselessly from the tub, pressing my back to the wall, I sidled towards the bathroom door. Of course I didn’t waste time wrapping a towel around myself. It would only get in the way, and after over three hundred years I have little use for modesty anyway. I braced myself for a moment and then threw myself around the side of the bathroom door, in a single motion that should bring me within striking distance of whoever it was lurking there.

But there was nobody. The room was empty. And the shadow on the wall was gone, too.

“Marcilla?” Enid stood behind me at the bathroom door, holding a towel wrapped around her. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Forget it. I was just mistaken.” But of course it wasn’t nothing. I had long ago learnt to trust my instincts. I hadn’t been seeing things. There had been someone here, and that someone was here no longer.

Casually, so as not to alarm Enid unnecessarily, I checked the window and the door. They were all securely shut from the inside. “Why didn’t you stay in the bath and keep talking as I was still there?” I asked her. “That’s what I told you to do.”

“I thought you might…need help.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to snap that she was far too new to help me, but I remembered how fragile she already was with her struggles to learn her powers. “Just do as I say next time,” I sighed, going back to the bathroom to drain the tub and dry myself off. “When I tell you to do something, there’s a good reason for it.”

She nodded, looking miserable. I stepped to her and lifted her chin so she was looking me in the eye. “It’s all right, darling,” I said. “Let’s go to bed and get some sleep.”

A little later, Enid was curled up next to me in bed, snoring gently. Normally I’d have been lulled into slumber listening to her soft snores, but right now I couldn’t let myself sleep. I reclined against the padded headboard, every sense alert, watching the patch of sunlight filtering through the curtained window slowly crawl across the wall as the hours passed, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did.

It was late in the afternoon when Enid woke. She rubbed her eyes, stretched, yawned, looked at me, and pointed an accusatory finger. “You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”

“How can you tell?”

“You’ve got that wide awake look on your face. You’ve been keeping watch again, haven’t you?” She didn’t bother to wait for my answer. “God, Marcilla, when will you realise that you need sleep, you nutter? I’ve told you over and over that I can keep watch as well as you.”

“Yes, I know you can.” I leant over to kiss her on the temple and got out of bed. “We’d better get ready to go out for dinner.”

“How can we find dinner here? In the middle of a city? People are everywhere. They’ll notice!”

I grinned. “You’ll see. Consider this a learning opportunity.” Fetching my phone from beside the bed, I search engined the name of the city and then looked for the unsafe and violence prone spots that tourists were advised to avoid. One was within extended walking distance, so we wouldn’t even have to bother with our bicycles. “Get dressed and let’s go.”

By the time we left the hotel darkness had fallen. I walked casually, my hand brushing Enid’s, trying to look as though we were just a couple out for an evening stroll, trying not to look anyone in the face so they wouldn’t notice my glowing red eyes. I’ve had a lot of practice at that. The streets were crowded, too crowded for me to be able to tell if anyone was watching for us, but by the same token it would be difficult to keep us in sight for long.

As though at random, taking our time, I steered Enid through streets that became narrower, progressively less crowded and well-lit, until we reached a to all appearances deserted stretch between the dark hulk of an apparently abandoned factory on one side and a row of old buildings set back from the street on the other. The space between the old buildings and the street were lined with big, leafy trees, and the shadows under them were dark and heavy. Of course, with our eyes we could still see quite well. I began to hum a tune, one of my favourite songs.

“What’s that you’re humming?” Enid asked.

I had to remind myself again that she was so young that even 1970s tunes were ancient to her. “Tony Christie, Avenues and Alleyways,” I said. “It seems appropriate. ‘While you sleep there’s a whole world coming alive/ Abel and his brother/Fighting one another/In and out of every dive.’ It’s a nice song. I’ll sing the whole thing for you if you like.”

“Please don’t.” She shook her head in disgust. “I thought your parents had made you take singing lessons?”

“I’ve had centuries to forget those lessons.” I laughed. “But I’ll try to remember just so I can sing to you.”

We walked on. The old houses got older and darker. Enid laced her fingers through mine. “Nice evening, isn’t it?” she said. “Did you notice that we’re being followed?”

I had to push down a bubble of laughter at the casual way she’d stated it. “Where?” I asked, “and how many?”

“Two of them, I think. Blokes. They’re behind us, this side of the street.” She hesitated. “Maybe they’re just going this way?”

“Let’s see.” I fished my phone out of my pocket, turned on the front camera, and held it at face level, so I could see the street behind us. Sure enough, there they were, still maybe thirty or forty metres away. “Let’s try a test.”

“A test?”

I pulled Enid by the arm out of the shadows of the trees so that we were illuminated by some wan lamplight. “Pose,” I told her, putting my arm around her shoulder, and held up the phone as though we were taking a selfie. My eyes were on the two figures in the frame, behind us. They stopped immediately as soon as we did.

“Yes, they’re following us.” I put the phone back in my pocket. “Makes things simpler for us, doesn’t it?”

“How?” To her credit Enid resisted any temptation to look over her shoulder.

“I was planning to find some hole-in-the-wall pub where we could try to get picked up by our food, but this is a lot better. And just two of them, too, one for each of us, the ideal number.”

She glanced at me. “So what are we going to do now?”

“Let them come to us,” I said, and raised her hand to my lips. “It’s a lot easier this way, you’ll see.”

______________________________________________

ENID:

With every day that passes, I find out more ways in which I love this nutter.

Today she stayed awake through the day, letting me sleep, while she kept watch. I know there’s something on her mind, something to do with the time she jumped out of the bath and into the other room. I wish she’d let me do more to deserve to be hers.

I know I’m not good enough. Though she keeps telling me I am, I don’t see how.

I mean, I can’t even do basic things yet. When we left the hotel she touched my shoulder. “Are your fangs under control?” she asked quietly.

They had been during the day, but when I tounged my mouth I could feel them pushing down. I shook my head.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “just don’t smile while we’re amongst people, that’s all.”

Can’t bloody even keep my fangs tucked up, I thought to myself. If Marcilla had any sense she’d dump me and move on. But she won’t, that’s why she’s a nutter.

We walked until it came to a dark and quiet part of town, with moths and things flitting about. Something flapped close by my shoulder and when I turned my head for a look at it I saw two blokes behind us. I told Marcilla and she said we’d feed from them. How? By letting them catch us.

This lass is mental, and I love her for it.

Why does she love me? I don’t know. Each time I ask myself this, the more I don’t have an answer.

So we walked on, Marcilla taking the chance to hold and hug me and snog me every once in a while so, she muttered in my ear, the knobs following us would decide that we were too tied up with each other to notice them. Then we reached an open space between two buildings, too wide to be called a ginnel, which was jammed full of things, a pile of tyres, boxes, and other rubbish.

“In here,” Marcilla muttered. “They’ll never pass up this chance.”

I dithered a moment. “Won’t they think it dodgy that we’re going in there?”

“No they won’t, they’ll think we’re going in for…you know.” She gave my arm a tug. “Come on.”

We turned into the space, and Marcilla wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in for a kiss. “Make it look good,” she muttered against my lips.

I didn’t have to try to make it look good. Every time she snogs me, I go weak in the knees and have to hold on to her. This time was no different.

My eyes were still closed and her mouth on mine when I heard the voice behind me. “Ey look what we ‘ave ‘ere.”

The other voice. “Looks like tourist bitches, where they shouldn’t be.” The English was thickly accented, with pauses between words.

“Doin’ what they shouldn’t be, too.” They were obviously not used to speaking English, but doing so to intimidate us.

Marcilla released me and we turned. The two of them were walking slowly towards us, with the self-satisfied look of hunters who’d got their prey cornered and helpless. One was bearded and had a big crooked nose, the other was tubby and had a scarred face. “Should teach them a lesson,” the first one said.

“We should teach them a man’s better than another whore. One good shag and…” Scar began undoing his belt buckle.

Marcilla raised a hand. “Gentlemen. Before you begin attempting to sate your lusts…” I could see them blinking at her in confusion. It was probably the most posh they’d ever heard anybody ever speak. “As I said, before you start your planned assault on our persons, I’ll give you one opportunity to back off and, in safety, go on your way.”

I’d asked Marcilla, when she’d been telling me about other times she’d hunted alone, why she sometimes gave her prey warning before she got stuck into them. She’d shrugged. “You’ll see.”

Now all I saw was these two gits blink at each other and then grin. “Wordy bitch,” Scar said. “Let’s shut her up.”

“Which one do you want, Enid?” Marcilla asked me calmly.

I couldn’t make myself speak. I’d suddenly reached the point I always did before feeding, when my gob filled with spit and my nose and head with the scent of blood almost within reach. My fangs pushed down fully, my tummy twisted with hunger, and I began moving towards Scar, who was closer to me than Beard. His eyes went wide and he began to scream.

The next thing I was aware of was Marcilla pulling my arms off Scar’s shoulders. “That’s enough, Enid,” she said. “That’s enough! Any more and you’ll kill him.”

I shook my head and, as always, the red haze faded from my mind. Beard was sitting with his back against the pile of tyres, his cakehole hanging open, moaning. Scar fell limply to the ground at my feet when Marcilla got my arms off him. I scrubbed the back of my hand across my lips. It came away red and wet.

“I keep giving them a chance to save themselves,” Marcilla said, putting her arm around me, as we walked out of that dark space and turned back the way we’d come. “If they don’t take that chance, and they never do, is it my fault what happens to them?”

“I…” I felt my eyes wetting. “I’ll never learn to control myself. I’m rubbish at this.”

She kissed my head. “Of course you will. It took me centuries, but I was alone, and you have me to help you.”

“How very touching,” a voice said, right behind us. “Young love is so very romantic. Not so young love, too, come to think of it.”

I literally jumped, like I was a character in the toons, the bellend’s blood churning in my tummy. Marcilla was much faster, and had already spun around, her lips raised in a snarl so her fangs showed. But then she sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Oh. It’s you.”

I turned slowly. I’d only seen him the one time, the morning when I’d been turned, but I clocked him immediately. He was leaning against a tree, watching us with a grin on his face. His eyes were black as black and had no smile in them at all.

“Yes, Countess,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again. I can absolutely guarantee, from your facial expressions, that the pleasure is all mine.”

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MARCILLA:

I stared at him and suddenly things fell into place.

“You. It was you in our hotel room today, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t seem the least bit put out. “Of course it was. But I decided to not intrude on your, ah, intimate time.”

I wished I could disembowel him. I had a very clear mental image of my teeth and nails laying him open at our feet, in a mess of his own blood and intestines. Of course he didn’t even have any blood or intestines. “What the hell do you want?”

“Straight to the point, I see. But I suppose I should have expected it, seeing that I told you when we first met that I don’t play games.” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “As I was saying, I have a job for you.”

“A job?” My mouth twisted involuntarily. “We don’t need jobs.”

“I should have said, I have a mission for you. You remember our agreement, right?”

“I’m sure you’d remind me if I said no, so I won’t. I repeat, what the hell do you want?”

“There’s a man, right here in this city. We require him to be stopped from attending a meeting. That is all.”

I blinked at him. “You’re going to have to be a little more explicit than that.”

He sighed. “If you’d be so kind as to rein in your hostility for a moment, Countess, I’ll tell you about it.” Reaching into his jacket, he fetched out a large yellow envelope and held it out to me. “Read this later for the details on this…objective of yours. What you need to know is that this man has a meeting scheduled that we very much want that he does not turn up for. Your mission is to make him miss that meeting. That’s all I’m asking of you.”

“All? You’ve told me nothing. Who is he? What is this meeting? When is this meeting? What do I have to do to make him miss it?”

“To take your questions one at a time, Countess: he is…a night club owner. That’s all you need to know. This meeting is with his….prospective business partner. It’s scheduled to take place at eleven in the evening on the fourth. And as for what you have to do…”he paused. “Well, you can do pretty much anything that you want to, I suppose, short of killing him. I mean, we don’t have any particular scruples about killing, but we’d rather avoid it. It draws attention and we don’t like attention, do we, Countess?”

“Will you please get to the point before I forget my aristocratic upbringing and tell you exactly what I think of you?” I frowned. “If all you need is to stop him attending the meeting, why can’t you do it yourself?”

“We did consider it. We thought of arranging an accident…” he shrugged. “But it would require far too much manipulation of possibilities and circumstances, and risk too much collateral damage. And besides, since we knew you were right here in this city, it just seemed easier to use you.”

I was seething. “So I’ll have to do this because you’re lazy?”

“If you say so.” He turned to Enid and back to me. “All you need to do is weaken him enough so that he misses the meeting. I don’t care how you do it, just that you do it. And remember that the meeting is on the evening of the fourth.”

“The fourth? That’s just three days from now. It doesn’t leave me much time.”

“Ah…I should have explained something. It’s not just you, Countess. Both of you will be needed for this task.”

“What? No!” My heart twisted with horror. “Enid can’t be involved!”

“Marcilla,” Enid said, “wait, I…”

“Stay out of this!” I snapped at her. “Listen, you…” I turned back to our – ‘Visitor’- the term suddenly popped into my head. “Enid can’t do this. She’s got no experience yet. I’ll take care of the whole thing, no matter how hard it is.”

“But there are three reasons, you see, why you can’t do it alone.” The Visitor pressed his lips together for a moment. “The first is, this man isn’t like those two individuals you disported yourselves with back there. He’s paranoid and is always surrounded by staff. You won’t be able to sneak into his office and suck him dry.”

“All right, so I’ll have to seduce my way into his bed, is that what you mean? I can do that. I know I’m not unprepossessing.”

“You still can’t do it alone. He only goes for threesomes, where the girls put on a show.”

I digested that. “How charming. And the third reason? You said that there were three.”

“He likes them young.”

And with that the Visitor was gone.

“Fuck,” I swore. I very seldom swear. It is a habit of those who cannot express themselves in simple words. But at this moment it felt appropriate. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Enid took my arm. “Let’s get back to the hotel, Marcilla. We can yap about it there.”

“But don’t you see what the bastard did?” My head was pounding with anger. “Why do you think he turned up at the room this morning and then disappeared?”

“He said he didn’t want to interrupt…”

I snorted. “And do you believe a word of that? He turned up there for one reason only, to show us…to show me…that he could find us when and wherever he wants. If it’s not a veiled threat I don’t know what is.”

“A threat?” Enid’s hand moved to her mouth. “To you?”

I shook my head. “No, my love.” My lips lifted in a sad smile. “To you.”

______________________________________________

ENID:

“Look at this.” Marcilla tore open the envelope and held out a photo. “Tell me what you think.”

I took it. The bloke in the photo was bald as a frog or else shaved his noggin. His neck was wider than his head. His eyes were turned down at the outer corners so they looked a bit like they were about to crawl off his mug. “Who is he?”

“Our…project.” Marcilla slapped the envelope down on our bed and sat down to pull off her boots. “Name’s Lothar Magrat. Doesn’t he look nice?”

“Ace as a knacker’s yard.” I looked again at the photo. His shoulders were the kind you see on a gorilla on the telly. His gut was like a gorilla’s, too. “Marcilla, this bloke’s a thug!”

“They all are, darling.” Marcilla stripped off her socks and took the photo back. “Every single one who’s important enough to have meetings someone wants interrupted is a thug, no matter what he – or she – looks like. Don’t you ever believe anything else. I’ve been watching them long enough to know.”

“So what about him? He’s just a night club owner, right?”

“Come on, Enid, of course he isn’t. He must be more than that.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know…racketeer? Aspiring politician? The possibilities are endless.” She pulled a few papers out of the envelope. “Here’s his night club…what? This has to be a joke.”

“What?”

“His night club. It’s called Starscream.”

“Good god.”

“Or good something else. Doesn’t matter either way.” She ruffled through the papers. “So, we’re going to go there tomorrow evening and take a look.”

“Tomorrow? Why not tonight? It’s not too late is it?””

Marcilla laughed bitterly. “Do you think we’d even be allowed inside with the clothes we’ve got? We’re going to have to go shopping first. I don’t exactly enjoy shopping.” She shook the envelope, and a wad of money fell out. I saw Euros, pounds, some Yank dollars, even Russian rubles. “We can afford some dresses, at least.”

“You’re going to take me along, any road?”

Marcilla sighed and looked at me. “Believe me, Enid, I’d much rather not. But I’m not going to take any chances with that bastard, and I don’t mean Magrat. I don’t want to discover he’s got other plans for you. I don’t want to come back and find you’ve been taken from me.” She jumped up suddenly. “Come here.”

And the next thing I knew she was snogging me, and desperately. “I love you,” she said between kisses. "You know I love you?”

“I know, you mad lass,” I told her. “I don’t know why, though.”

“Keep not knowing. Just let me love you more.”

Her hands went all over me, and in a brace of shakes I was starkers. I had a brief thought of the Enid of a few months ago, who’d have gone red as a beet from being seen nude. But that Enid was done with a long time ago. I wasn’t that Enid anymore.

She pushed me down on my back, spread my legs, and her mouth was on my fanny, her tongue pressing into my vadge before flicking across my clitty in the way I’d grown to love so much. I moaned and twisted and bucked, my legs scissoring across her shoulders. Her right hand reached up to fondle my boob and tweak my nip. Her other arm was across my lower tummy, holding me in place for her mouth and tongue. The sensations she was giving me made the ceiling spin before my eyes. My vadge and fanny spasmed as I began to come and come and come.

Can’t say how many times I came – I lost count after the sixth time – when she finally let me go and crawled up to lie beside me. I was gasping and panting. “God…I’m mindless.”

She snogged me tenderly. “Just breathe.”

“No…” I turned to her. “Marcilla. You keep doing it to me but I hardly ever get to do the same to you. Let me do it now.”

“I get pleasure from your pleasure. I really don’t need any more.” She’d said this before but I wasn’t going to have any of that.

“Give over. I’m going to love you whether you want it or not. Strip.”

When she was naked I rolled over on her and looked down at her perfect face and the red eyes I loved so much. I kissed them and her red lips, nipping them a little with my fangs, making her giggle a bit, then down her neck to her tits. Her nips were brown and hard, and when I rolled them in my mouth she groaned. “Enid. Keep doing that a bit.”

I did it, moving my mouth from one boob to the other, and Marcilla began grunting and twisting under me. I reached down with one hand to her fanny and found it soaked. When I ran my finger up her slit she jerked. “Oh.”

“You like it?” I looked up at her. Her eyes were closed and her head moving side to side so I thought I didn’t need an answer and pushed my finger up and down a few more times and then into her vadge. She made a strange sound like a whine and thrust her hips so hard against my hand that my fingers went all the way inside her.

I was almost frit. “Marcilla? Are you all right?”

She didn’t reply, just reached down, caught hold of my wrist, holding it in place, and began bucking her hips against it, so that my fingers went in and out of her vadge while my thumb began bumping against her clitty. She started moving faster and faster, and with her other hand pressed my mouth to her boobs so I couldn’t do aught but lick and suck her nips. All of a sudden she shuddered and then relaxed. Her chest was rising and falling fast with her gasping.

“Enid…you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said at last.

“You nutter,” I said, “I know that can’t be true. You must have had a lot of better shags in all these years.”

“Just believe me when I tell you how good you are.” She pushed herself up. “Let’s go and finish that bath that bastard interrupted, shall we?”

Afterwards, when we were snuggling naked in bed, she said something. “Enid. Do you ever regret leaving your old life?”

“What?” I was shocked. “No!”

“I’ve been regretting taking you from it. Every moment.”

“You silly cow.” I smooched her on the nose. “I look at you and I melt inside when I think I’ll be yours forever.”

She smiled, but the smile didn’t touch her eyes. “Enid.”

“Yeah?”

“Forever can be a very long time when I’m terrified for you.”

“You don’t need to be, you daftie. Just you wait and see. I’ll learn all the stuff you keep trying to teach me someday, just like you keep telling me.” I wanted to believe it for her. “Now give me a smile, darling.”

A little later we did it again.

______________________________________________

LOTHAR:

Isn’t the best mood I ever had, today. Not but what I didn’t expect any different. Not a lot of days things go my way enough to justify a good mood. In this job you need to expect problems.

I take care of problems, but that doesn’t mean I’ve any reason to like them.

There was the usual early evening line outside the door. I don’t even look at them. Sheep to be fleeced, and I don’t even call them here. They come by themselves.

Helmut – is that the driver’s name? I’ve better things to do than remember – takes the car round to the private entrance and opens the door. “What time will you need me, Herr Magrat?”

“I’ll call you when I do.” I’ve no intention of letting him pop off somewhere for the evening. If I’m paying him, I want my money’s worth. “Be here.”

Idly, I wonder if I should hire a bodyguard. He could stand at my shoulder, dressed all in black – black suit, socks, shoes, shirt, tie, the lot – and by his very presence intimidate people. Intimidating people in advance might save me a lot of trouble afterwards. Of course it would be a frivolous expense, so I just sometimes fantasise about it just as I fantasise about keeping a roomful of pet tarantulas.

They finally put down the new red carpet on the floor of the passage inside the private entrance. I kneel on one knee to take a look at it, rub a bit of the plush between my thumb and forefinger, and grunt. It’s satisfactory, for a change. Of course, they’ll jack up the bill, but that’s to be expected. If they raise it too much I’ll sue, so there is that, too.

The simpering blonde bint who is, at least for now, my secretary greets me at my office door. “Herr Magrat. How are you this evening?”

I barely bother acknowledging her existence. She’s just decorative. I could replace her in a moment if I have to. I’m careful not to get dependent on anybody. “As usual. Get me the schedule for the evening.”

It’s the usual list of calls to suppliers, cleaners, and the like. Then there are the other numbers, the ones Miss Blondie out in the front office doesn’t know the identities of, the people I need to talk to in private.

I wait till she leaves before sitting down behind my desk. My office is one of the luxuries I afford myself. It’s bigger than the flat I used to live in when I first arrived in this city, when I had to stand in offices like this one and listen for my orders. Back then I’d promised myself that one day I’d be the one giving the orders, no matter what I had to do to get to that position.

It’s taken many years, but I did it.

I do everything I say I’ll do.

First thing on the agenda, I call my wife. She picks up on the fifth ring. “What do you want?”

“Am I interrupting you? Got a roll in the hay lined up?” She sniffs in reply. She doesn’t like me any more than I like her, but she likes my money and she is convenient at my side when we have to entertain or meet important people. “What I wanted to tell you is, we have a party to attend tomorrow evening at eight. Be ready. I’ll have you picked up. You can get back to your toyboy now.” I ring off without waiting for her answer and reach for the top paper on the pile on my desk.

Why had I ever married in the first place? The usual reasons, status and money. She had both. I have the second now, more than she ever did, but not the first. People want my help, and they pretend to like me, but they don’t.

One by one, for the next couple of hours, I work through the pile on my desk. I mostly rely on paperwork. Computers are too easily hacked, leak too much information. There are things I’d never ever put on a computer.

I haven’t got where I am by taking chances.

Finally the paperwork is done. In a little bit it’ll be time to take the tour of the club, but before I even rise from my chair my phone buzzes.

It’s not my main phone, it’s the other, the non-smart push-button phone with the number only a few people know. I take a deep breath to compose myself before taking the call.

The greeting is short. “Magrat.”

“Boris.” His voice is like silk, far too soft for a man that big, and sends chills down my spine. I’ve sat across the table from him and listened to him quote Gogol and Dostoyevsky, while his grey eyes studied me as though I was a piece of meat on his plate. I don’t bother telling him that it’s nice of him to call. We both know it isn’t true. “What is it?”

“You have money ready? We have first consignment lined up.”

“I have the money. Are you delivering tonight?”

“My man will be there in hour. And meeting on fourth?” He pauses. “Don’t miss meeting, Magrat. We’ll be delivering rest of material and we will want rest of our money. Be there.” He rings off before I can say another word.

If I had a choice, I wouldn’t deal with the Ukrainian mob. But in this business you work with those who can give you what you want. Boris can give me what I want, at the price I want.

Everything else is secondary to that.

______________________________________________

MARCILLA:

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that that Enid had no idea of what elegant night club dress entailed, and that I had to help her along every step of the way.

“It’s not just so-called chic wear,” I said. “We’ve got to stand out enough from the rest, so that he notices us. You understand what I’m getting at? There will be a lot of pretty women there. We’ll need to stand out.”

“Give over,” Enid said. “You’re prettier than everyone.”

I sighed. “You’ve never been at one of these establishments, have you? Believe me, you don’t know what splendiferous paragons of feminine pulchritude grace their floors.”

“Now you’re just mocking me.” She planted a kiss on my cheek. “But, all right, I’ll let myself be dolled up if you say so.”

So I picked out a dress for her, and then another, and then one more.

“What are you getting all these for?” she asked, confused, as she stood in her bra and knickers in the changing room, pulling on the second one. “Don’t we just need one each?”

“It’s not going to be over in one evening, Enid. I can absolutely assure you of that.”

Later, after we’d finished clothes shopping, I took her to a beauty parlour I’d seen earlier and got ourselves makeovers. Enid gaped when she saw herself in the mirror afterwards. (What? Of course we’re reflected in mirrors. We’re solid, aren’t we?) “Who’s that? I can’t clock her.”

“Welcome to the wild side,” I grinned. “Now we need shoes, and handbags, too, like the proper ladies we aren’t.” By the time we were done it was time to head over to…I winced at the name…Starshine. The evening was well advanced enough that the club would be busy.

The damned place was as pretentious and as ugly on the outside as the name indicated. I’ve been to plenty of nightclubs, some understated and quiet, some wildly extravagant. This was in the second category, with floodlights at ground level trained on the façade. One glance was enough to tell me that it would need a lot of money to run. Therefore, it would have to earn an equivalently large amount of money, or else money would have to be earned by other means. I suspected that the reason we were here had something to do with those other means.

There was a queue at the door. I’d not expected that. It wasn’t long, but it did mean that we couldn’t just sneak past the doorman while he was distracted. Of course, I could have slipped by him with my…abilities…easily enough, but Enid couldn’t. Not yet.

“Just let me do any talking that’s necessary,” I murmured to her. “And don’t smile unless you’re sure that your fangs are under control.”

She nodded shyly and took my arm. We joined the back of the queue, behind a couple who were arguing among themselves, in whispers but vehemently. The man hissed something finally, stepped away from the queue, and turned towards us.

“Meine Damen, Sie können diesen Platz einnehmen. Ich gehe.“

I blinked at him innocently. “I’m so sorry, we aren’t from around here. I don’t speak German.”

He hesitated a moment. “Oh. You are…welcome to take my place in the line. I go away now.” Turning on his heel, he stalked away. The woman with him threw us a venomous glance and followed. Suddenly, we were almost at the door.

“Why did you pretend that you can’t speak German?” Enid murmured in my ear. At least she’d learnt to not whisper. Small but satisfying steps. “It’s your own language!”

“If we’re taken to be tourists, we’re more attractive…prospective partners…than locals. Now try to look confident for the doorman, not as though I kidnapped you and am forcing you to come along with me.”

Enid gave a shocked little giggle, straightened her shoulders, and a moment and an appreciative glance from the very big and muscular doorman, we paid a small entrance fee and were in.

Inside it was so crowded that for a moment I was afraid of losing Enid in the throng. Men in business suits spent half their time on their mobile phones while skinny women in designer dresses and fake tans looked daggers at each other while pretending polite conversation. The décor was purple and violet, and a golden stylised star rotated slowly on the ceiling. Music thrummed and roiled from speakers set in the corners of the walls, while couples gyrated on the dance floor.

“The star that screamed, I suppose,” I said. I had to put my mouth to Enid’s ear to be heard over the noise. “It’ll have to scream very loudly to be heard in here.”

Enid began to laugh, and clapped a hand quickly over her mouth. I caught a flash of fang, and nodded approvingly at her quick thinking. “Let’s go over to the bar, pretend to drink something, and then we can think of what to do next.”

As I’d expected, the staff were all English speaking and there was no difficulty ordering a couple of glasses of white wine. I chose white because it’s hard from any distance to tell that the amount in the glass isn’t actually decreasing and that none of it’s getting drunk. I could, of course, manage a few sips, but I’d rather we didn’t. Alcohol can have as unpleasantly potent effects on our kind as it can on humans, sometimes more.

“Look at that,” I murmured in Enid’s ear.

“What?”

“See those two over there?” I indicated a couple of heavyset men in business suits with a motion of my glass. “They’re following that staff girl to the back. I’ve seen her take a couple of others there too.”

“What does that mean?”

“There must be a back room for, uh, special customers. That must be where the real money is made.” I was about to say more when I felt a subtle shift in the atmosphere, as though the entire club had fallen silent for the space of one heartbeat.

I glanced up at the gallery that oversaw the main floor.

“Don’t look now,” I said to Enid, “but our host just arrived.”

______________________________________________

LOTHAR:

Boris’ man is scrawny with a face like a rat. To look at him you’d think anyone could break him in half with one hand. I’ve long since done my research on him, of course, just as I have with the other members of Boris’ mob; and I know well enough to not go by appearances. Taras-the-Blade carries a knife in a sleeve sheath and has killed, my information says, more than ten men with it.

Once he’s collected his money and gone away, I take the unobtrusive brown paper packet he left and walk to the balcony overlooking the main floor. There I meet my floor manager, Marcel. He’s one of my better investments, a former casino table manager I’d hired away from Monte Carlo. I’m sure he’s stealing from me, but he’s managed to keep it discreet enough and the amounts low enough to escape detection, which means that it’s an amount I can afford to lose.

He greets me with the obsequiousness everyone here shows me. I don’t bother to listen to his good evening and how are you today. “How’s business so far?” I ask.

He knows I’m not talking about the scene below us. “The back rooms are full.”

I nod. I don’t have a gambling licence, of course, so officially I know nothing about the gambling games in the back room. I just rented out the back rooms for private parties, what they do there is their business entirely. And if the drinks – and the strippers – laid on in the back room cost more, is it my fault if the people holding the parties choose to pay more?

I don’t take a cut of the gambling proceeds. I prefer it that way and so do the punters. In licenced casinos, the casino is always the ultimate winner. In the back room games they know I’m not involved, that the only cheating that happens is what they do to each other.

I make my money from the room rentals, the booze, the strippers, and the…other things the clientele want. And if they want to take one of the strippers, or one of their own…guests…to one of the inner, inner rooms, the discreet suites at the very back, that’s fine with me, too.

Of course I have hidden cameras in those suites. I may be generous to the clientele, but I’m not stupid. The cameras are my insurance policy.

I hand Marcel the packet. “This is the sample amount they promised. The rest will be delivered in a few days.” I keep the details deliberately vague. “Let me know of any quality concerns.”

There will be no quality concerns, of that I am certain. But I might just pay someone to complain so I can see if Marcel will pass the complaint back to me as he is supposed to.

Marcel goes off with the packet. I think about going back to my office, but it feels small and congested suddenly, full of the bitterness of struggle and effort. Instead I stay where I am for a bit, leaning my arms on the balustrade as I look down morosely on the main floor.

Is this all, I think, is this what I struggled so hard to achieve? To cope daily with the thousand petty details that go into running this place, to cater to the whims of important people and collect blackmail on them so that I can use them if and when I have to? To deal with mafia thugs like Boris’ Ukrainian mob?

The call from Boris has taken more out of me than I care to acknowledge. I need relief, I think, physical relief. It’s been too long.

Of course my wife and I don’t touch each other. We barely inhabit the same house anymore. Not that she’d be able to satisfy my needs even if she’d been willing.

I could call in a couple of prostitutes, naturally, but that wouldn’t do either. I’d know that they were playing a role, nothing more than a ***********ed fantasy. That doesn’t get me off, never did, never will.

I’m just about to turn around and finally go back into my office when something catches my eye.

It’s as though the entire nightclub crowd fades away, except for a space next to the bar. It’s as though a spotlight shines on that little patch of floor, and on them.

There are two of them. One is very pale, black-haired, dressed in dark green. The other, slightly shorter and plumper, brown haired and wearing black striped in gold. They can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. Even from this distance they’re beautiful.

I stare at them for a few long, long minutes while the nightclub noise and motion slowly coalesce around them. I watch them until they kiss, and I know they’re more than just casual acquaintances.

Then I turn around and go, not to my office, but to the security room where the closed-circuit camera monitors are.

On the way I call Marta and tell her to meet me; right away, now.

______________________________________________

ENID:

“Kiss me,” Marcilla hissed under her breath.

“What, now?” My noggin swam. “Here?”

“Yes. Now.” Her tone was urgent, though she was smiling. “Do it.”

I turned, slightly awkward because I was still holding the bloody full wine glass, and pressed my lips to hers. She put her arm around my shoulders and bent me over backwards while her lips jammed up against mine. I was frit at snogging in public like this, but nobody paid the slightest attention, as far as I could see.

I was breathless when Marcilla finally released me. “That’s fine,” she said, facing me so her back was to the balcony. “Now don’t say a word except how much you love me.” I blinked like an owl, flummoxed. “In case he can read lips, you nit,” she whispered viciously.

I gulped. “I love you,” I said, feeling like a prat, even though it was true.

“He was watching us like a hawk,” Marcilla told me, leaning close. “I’ve got my back to him. Is he still there? Don’t make a spectacle of staring at him.”

I flicked a dekko at the balcony and back. “He’s just leaving.”

“Probably to spy on us some more, from somewhere more private.”

“How did he notice us?” I asked in her ear. “There’s this crowd.”

“I made us noticeable to him.” Marcilla held out her hand to me as the music changed to something slower. “It’s one of the things you’ll need to learn. Want to dance?”

“I can’t dance, you tart, and you know it.”

“Oh. Right. I’ll have to teach you. Well, let’s…” her peepers flicked around the room quickly. “Let’s move to where we’re in clear sight of one of the cameras.”

By this time I’d given up all hope of understanding what she was planning, so I just put my paw in hers and let me be pulled to a spot where one of the violet lights shone brightly on us. It was also uncomfortably close to one of the music speakers, and my ears flinched from the sound. It wasn’t just my ears, either, my feet felt the vibration right through the thin-soled fancy shoes Marcilla had bought for us. I thought I’d go deaf.

Marcilla didn’t seem to even notice. She pulled me close, pressed her boobs to mine, and then her lips to my mouth. I shivered involuntarily, and felt myself getting wet between the legs.

Just then a bloke appeared at our elbow. He was quite fit, too; I might have wanted to do him back in the old days if he’d been my age. He said something in German. Marcilla replied in English, he replied in English, she said something back, but the music was so loud I could barely make out a word. The man went red and quickly left.

Marcilla looked at his retreating back a moment and kissed me again.

I don’t know how many times we kissed, or for how long, but I was weak-kneed when she finished and put her mouth to my ear. “We should go back to the hotel now,” she said. “Don’t say a word, I’ll explain later.”

She didn’t, though, until we were back in our room. “I can see you have questions,” she said. “So let’s start. I assume the first one is why we left the club.”

“Deffo,” I replied. “Why did we? It isn’t even half past eleven yet.”

She sighed. “We drew his attention, but he’s not an idiot. He’s going to want to find out who we are. I can absolutely guarantee you that we were followed back here. As for your second question…”

“What did that man say who came up to you?”

Marcilla blinked. “Oh…he was just trying to pick me up. Said he could show me a better time than you could. I…set him straight.”

“You could have let him pick you up, and fed from him, right?”

“Wrong. Our man Lothar most certainly was watching us, and probably had us followed back here. There’s no way I could have fed from him.” She rubbed her face. “We’d better not go out again tonight. We’ll find some way to feed early in the morning. I promise.”

“I’m not hungry, anyway,” I said. It wasn’t true, but I didn’t want to mess her up more than she clearly already was. “Marcilla?”

“Hm?”

“How are we, you know, going to do it with him? I’m bricking it.”

“Oh. Of course.” She stared at me and her red eyes just about radiated love. “I’m so sorry you’re involved in this, Enid.”

“Well, I’m blooming well not sorry. Just tell me how we’ll do it!”

She thought about it a moment. “I think it would be better,” she said, “if we practiced it.”

I was flummoxed. “Practiced? What d’you mean?”

She reached out and touched my face. “Have you ever watched pornography? Specifically, lesbian pornography?”

I felt my mug grow hot with blushing. “A few times,” I managed.

One of her beautiful eyebrows rose. I wish I could learn how to raise just one eyebrow. “That’s good, that’s excellent, though…”she smiled that fangy smile that always made my heart crunch up with love for her. “…I’m surprised you were interested in lesbian erotica before meeting me. Didn’t you claim that you were straight until then?”

I don’t know what I mumbled in reply, but she laughed outright. “Well then. The first thing in pornography is that you make a spectacle of taking off your clothes. You probably know the routine. Wriggle around, thrust out your chest while removing your bra, bend your knees and act sensual while stripping off your knickers. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, well, but…”

“Well, forget all that. We aren’t going to do that.’

“We aren’t?”

“This man…Magrat. I don’t know him but I’ve met many of the kind. If he wanted prostitutes he’d hire them. If he liked pornographic actresses he could probably hire them, too, for a private show. No, he wants the real thing.”

“What’s the real thing?”

“We act like ourselves, not as though we’re performing for him.” Marcilla began taking off her dress as she spoke. “That means no posing while sexily removing our bras one strap at a time. No hip wriggling while taking off our knickers. And…” She stripped me, in that way I never yet have got used to, when one moment I’m dressed and the next I’ve nothing on. “When we’re giving each other cunnilingus…” She pushed me on my back and took her place between my thighs. “We do it normally. We aren’t going to push our hair back like a porno actress for the camera view. We aren’t going to come in from one side so that our vulvas are visible while we’re licking each other.” She suited herself to her words, and I jumped as her tongue flicked my slit. “Am I making sense?”

“Yes…but…” I couldn’t let her make me lose my mind again with coming before I asked her the question I wanted. “What about him? I don’t want to do him, but suppose he insists?”

Marcilla got a look in her eyes that, if I were someone who didn’t know her, would’ve sent me screaming. “Don’t worry about that. You’re not going to have to have sex with him. That is absolutely not going to happen.”

I didn’t ask anything more after that.

______________________________________________

LOTHAR:

Marta is the closest I have to a right hand woman. She’s big – well over a hundred kilos – and most of it is fat, but she has organisational skills like a supercomputer and is about as loyal as can be expected. We’d once been lovers when we’d both been much younger and she’d been much slimmer. She broke it off on her own, but substituted her ability in bed with her ability with organisation. She does the things I tell her to which I don’t ask anyone else.

So when I call her and ask her to report to me at the security camera room she doesn’t look the least bit surprised, just stands there watching while I zoom in one of the cameras on the two women and sharpen the focus. “Those two.”

“Yes?”

“I want to know who they are. When they leave, have them followed. Find out where they’re staying, what their names are, everything. I need the information by tomorrow morning.”

Marta looks at the screen and nods. “Anything else?”

“That’ll do for now…wait.” On the camera I see a man, one of the evening crowd, come up and say something to the black haired woman. She snaps something in reply and the man visibly flinches and turns away. “That gentleman there.”

“What about him?”

“Have Marcel meet him and invite him for a drink with me in my office, in ten minutes’ time.”

Marta doesn’t ask why. She never asks why. She just nods and departs to do what I tell her to.

This is why she is important to me.

When she’s gone I focus the camera again on the two. Even from the overhead view, and allowing for the vagaries of security camera footage, they’re even prettier than I’d imagined. The tall pale one is particularly striking, but her shorter and plumper friend is no less attractive, though in a more understated way. My heart rate picks up in anticipation as I imagine them naked in my private suite upstairs, and I tell myself sternly not to get ahead of myself. With one last look over my shoulder at them kissing, I leave the room and return to the office.

Marcel has just arrived with the man I’d seen on the camera, who’s looking a bit alarmed. He’s quite tall and good looking except for a slightly receding hairline. “This is Herr Stadlbauer,” Marcel says. “I’ll have your drinks delivered right away.”

I smile briefly, and gesture Stadlbauer to the seat across my desk. “Champagne,” I tell Marcel.

He nods and departs and I look at my guest speculatively. He’s visibly nervous and growing more so by the minute. “My friend,” I tell him, “please calm down. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Is it about the woman down there?” A bead of sweat trickles down his face. “I swear, I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Don’t worry. Just tell me what happened. What did you say to her? What did she reply?”

Stadlbauer blushes like a schoolgirl. “I thought the tall one was pretty, and…I thought I would see if I could get her to myself.”

I nod encouragingly. “You propositioned her. And?”

Marcel comes in with the champagne and I wait till he’s left. “And then?”

“She said she didn’t speak German, so I asked her again in English.” My interest perks up further when I hear that. So they’re foreigners. This is getting better. “I said I could show her a better time than her girlfriend could.”

“And what did she say?”

He gulps down some champagne before replying. “She…said I could go and fuck myself with a strap-on dildo and see if that gave me a good time.”

I fight down a laugh. I like that girl more by the minute. “Ah well, you can’t win them all. Have a great rest of the evening, Herr Stadlbauer, and the next time you want to visit, your entrance is free.”

The rest of the evening passes without incident. I decide to spend what’s left of the night at my suite upstairs instead of going home. That’s what I do most of the time anyway. Marta calls just as I sink into my favourite chair with a stein of ice-cold Dunkelbrӓu in my hand. “Yes?”

“Those two women are staying at a hotel.” She gives me the name. “They arrived yesterday in the morning. They’re tourists, on a bicycle tour of the continent.”

“Oh?” I feel a sudden shaft of anxiety that they’d move on. “What else?”

“They’ve foreign passports, obviously. Their names are Enid Jones and Marcilla Karnstein.”

Enid Jones and Marcilla Karnstein. I run the names over in my mind and in my mouth. I grow aware that Marta is still talking. “What?”

“I said, do you need their room number?”

So they’re sharing a room? If I’d any doubts about their being a couple, those doubts are gone. “Not just now, but keep it if necessary. Good job, Marta. You can go home now.”

“Thank you, sir.” When we stopped being lovers she retreated to formality in her manner towards me.

That’s one more reason I can, at least in some things, trust her.

She doesn’t expect anything more from me than what she already has.

______________________________________________

MARCILLA:

Early in the morning, with dawn in the sky, Enid and I left to look for food. We found it in the shape of a drunk tourist youth slumped in a doorway. He wasn’t really conscious enough to even register our presence when we hastily fed from him. When we left he was just starting to blink awake.

“Get some sleep,” Enid said, when we got back to our room. “I’ll sit up watch if you want me to.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse but then an immense yawn shook my body. “I think we’d both better get to sleep,” I told her. “It’s not likely that we’ll be bothered today and we need to look our best when we go back to the club tonight.”

Enid slipped off her clothes and as always I couldn’t keep from staring at her curves like a besotted virgin. “Marcilla?”

“Yes?”

“I said, do you think he’ll make a move on us tonight?”

“If not tonight, then tomorrow for certain.” I stretched. “Tomorrow night’s his meeting that we have to disrupt, so if he doesn’t do anything tonight we’ll have to try and seduce him instead of waiting for him to seduce us.”

“And how do we do that?”

“I don’t know.” My eyes were growing heavy. I climbed into bed beside her. “I’ll think about it later.”

It was surprising how well I slept, considering everything that we had to worry about.

I suppose that a total lack of human conscience can be a helpful thing.

When I opened my eyes it was just going dark outside. Enid wasn’t by my side but I could hear her in the bathroom. As I sat up she returned, wearing a shower cap and nothing else. “Ah, at last she awakes!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were going to snore till tomorrow.”

“You rat!” I threw a pillow at her. “I do not snore!”

She laughed and caught the pillow. “How do you know that you don’t? You too much an aristocrat to snore, is that it?” She pulled the covers off me. “Come on, let’s get you bathed and that.”

Later, we dressed in different outfits from the previous night; I in a dark red dress that matched my eyes, Enid in bright blue that showed off her complexion to great effect. It was just going on ten when we arrived at the Starscream and tonight there wasn’t any line at the door. The doorman, the same one as last night, nodded to us and let us through.

The usual cover charge later, we were on the edge of the dance floor. I glanced around casually but couldn’t see any sign of our, uh, host. But at the same time I had a powerful feeling of being watched. I didn’t dismiss that feeling as nonsense; I learnt to trust my instincts centuries ago. But it was only after I spent some time covertly and surreptitiously looking around that I spotted our watcher.

“Hefty woman in black, up on the balcony,” I murmured into Enid’s ear while pretending to teach her a few steps of slow-dance. “She’s been watching us ever since we came in. Probably Magrat’s assistant.”

The next time I swung Enid around she took a quick look. “I see her. Should we be worried?”

“I don’t think so. She’s certainly keeping an eye on us for her boss, and that means he’s interested.”

Enid was silent for a while as she tried to pick up the rhythm I was trying to get her into. “Then why isn’t he doing something himself?” she asked finally.

I steered her away from another couple. It was unlikely that they could overhear us but I didn’t want to take any chances. “Maybe he has other business right now,” I said finally. “Enid?”

“Yeah?”

“You can dance if you aren’t being self-conscious, you know. You’ve been so busy thinking about that woman up there that you’ve forgotten to worry about how you’re doing and so you haven’t even stepped on my toes in several minutes now.”

“You tart!” As I’d expected, she tried to step on my foot, but I’d already moved it out of the way. “I’ll get you for that later.”

“In bed? Is that a promise?” Even as I laughed at her I saw the fat woman on the balcony suddenly hurry away. “Wait…I think something is finally happening now.”

It was, however, another twenty minutes, and we’d just bought another couple of glasses of white wine we weren’t going to drink from the bar when I saw a tall slim man in a pin-striped suit approach us. I’d noticed him early on, the previous night, and soon identified him as management. He had that unmistakable air.

“Ladies?” he said, in English. So he was aware that we ‘didn’t speak’ German. “Could I have a word with you?”

“Yes?”

“I am Marcel Blanchet, the floor manager.”

I blinked, and tried to look confused and alarmed. “I don’t understand. Have we done anything wrong?”

“No, no.” He made that complex Gallic gesture that I’ve never been able to master, a combination shrug and wave of the hands. “I can assure you that there is no problem whatever.”

“Well then…why are you here?”

“Mr Magrat, the owner of this club, he asked me to request you to join him at his private table at the back.” He bowed slightly and held out a hand. “If you’d follow me…this way.”

I’d already coached Enid in what her reaction should be if we came across an invitation like this, so I didn’t even need to glance at her. “That’s kind of him. We were getting tired and about to leave, but we can certainly spare time for him.” We followed this Blanchet to a table at the back, partly screened off, where a bulky figure rose to welcome us.

“Welcome to my club.” He was speaking English too. “Young ladies as beautiful as you are a rarity. Please, do sit down.”

Seen up close he was even more of the ‘thug’ Enid had called him. He wasn’t tall, but his shoulders were about as wide as the two of us put together side by side. Under the overhead lights his shaved scalp gleamed violet and green. His heavy brows sank his eyes in deep shadow. His voice was a low rumble. “So, tell me,” he said, when we’d sat, “what brings two lovely creatures like you to my humble establishment?”

“We wanted to see the nightlife,” I said. “We’re on a bicycle tour and someone I know back home told us that this was a good spot. He’s been here a few times, though that was years ago.”

“I trust that we’ve managed to do justice to his recommendation.” He glanced at our glasses. “I see you’ve already provided yourself with drinks, but if I might suggest some of the best house champagne?” Somehow, as though by magic, flutes of bubbling drink appeared before us. The service was so unobtrusive that only the awareness of the waiters’ blood flowing through their veins told me that they’d been there. “What are your names, if I might ask?”

I told him, knowing that he almost certainly knew them already. He nodded. “I am Lothar Magrat, but you can call me Lothar. Where are you staying?”

I told him, again knowing that he was quite well aware of it already. He nodded again. “Are you planning to stay on in town or are you leaving?”

“We thought we’d stay on a couple of days more. It’s a nice city.”

“Yes, it is,” he said with simple pride. “Well, then, you’re on a bicycle tour? What is this, a gap year before you begin university?”

Enid nodded. I shrugged. “Life’s short, so we thought we’d live it up while we could.” I took a tiny, very tiny, sip of the champagne. As far as my far from educated palate could tell, it was good. “And you, Mr Magrat?”

“What about me?” he chuckled. “I’m sure pretty young people like you can’t be curious about me. And I told you to call me Lothar.”

“How does someone like you manage to make time in their busy schedule to talk to a couple of irrelevant tourists like us, Lothar?”

“You aren’t irrelevant. Nobody is.” He turned to Enid. “Well, young lady…Enid, is it? You’re very silent. Am I boring you?”

I glanced anxiously at Enid but she’d already lifted her champagne flute to her mouth to mask her fangs. “You aren’t, not at all. But like Marcilla asked, why are you taking such good care of us? You must have a lot of other work to do.”

Magrat sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, the latter part of that is true.” He looked at us, from me to Enid and back again. “See here, since you’re here in town for a couple more days, I’ll be holding a small and exclusive private party tomorrow evening in my suite upstairs. I’d like to invite you to it.”

I didn’t want to appear eager, of course, or keep the upwelling of triumph from showing in my voice. “I suppose we could do that. We haven’t been at a party in weeks and simply weeks, have we, Enid?”

She shook her head. Her voice was muffled by the champagne glass. “Not since Adelbert’s birthday party. You remember that.”

“Adelbert?” Magrat asked.

“A friend of ours.” I yawned. “I’m sorry, but we’re a bit tired. When should we arrive tomorrow?”

“At seven. I’ll tell the doorman to show you right in, and Marcel will conduct you to my suite.” His phone rang and he snatched it out of his pocket with an annoyed frown. “Excuse me. Ja? Ich bin gleich da. Gib mir bitte einen Moment.” He pocketed his phone and looked at us apologetically. “I’m sorry. Business calls. But I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

“At seven,” I promised him, and reached for Enid’s hand as I rose. “We’ll be leaving then, Mr Mag…Lothar.”

He nodded. “Good night, young ladies. Sleep well.” He grinned briefly. “You’ll need the energy tomorrow.”

He’d already disappeared when we left, but the fat woman was back on the balcony, watching us.

______________________________________________

LOTHAR:

The party with my wife is exactly the waste of time I’d thought it would be. It’s the kind of function where I have to put in an appearance just to maintain the courtesies with people who are in a position to bring business – all manner of business – my way. I’ve to do this a few times every month. After shaking a few hands and smiling a few smiles at people whose only value to me are the money they have and the names they know, I’m more than eager to leave.

My wife left my side early on and is at the drinks table, her hand wrapped around a cocktail of some species. I go over to tell her I’m leaving. “You can do as you want, of course.”

“Anything I want?” Her eyes go blank in the way they always do when she’s about to say something outrageous. “Right, then tomorrow I want to fly to Greece on holiday.”

I stare at her a moment and something clicks inside me. I’ve had enough of this routine. She’ll ask something, I’ll refuse, and she’ll use this refusal to justify her overall bad behaviour. Not this time. “All right, go.”

Her surprise shows. “You mean it?”

“I said so. Go and get it out of your system. Send me your plane ticket details, I’ll give you the money.” Without another word, I turn around and leave.

By the time I reach the club it’s almost eleven. I am irritated and on edge, with my wife and the fact that I’ve wasted most of the evening. And I don’t expect either that the two tourist girls would be back, though I asked Marta to keep an eye out for them.

She appears in my office as soon as I enter it. “Sir. The tourist women are here. I’ve been keeping an eye on them.”

“They are?” I’m honestly surprised. “What are they doing?”

She makes the minor movement of her meaty shoulders which serves her as a shrug. “Dancing and…” her face twists in slight distaste. Marta does not hold with homosexuality. “…kissing. They don’t dance very well.”

I glance at the pile of papers on my desk, which I’ll have to deal with, but most of it can wait for a bit. “All right. I’m going to finish the most urgent stuff and go down to my private table. Ask Marcel to invite those two for a drink. Keep an eye on them in the meantime.”

A little later, then, I’m sitting across from them at my private table.

This is the first time I’ve seen the girls close to. The tall pale one – Marcilla Karnstein, my mind supplies the information – is intimidatingly beautiful. There’s something predatory in the way she looks at me across the table. If I weren’t in such dire need of release, I might almost be tempted to give up on the two of them, just because of the way she looks at me. It’s reminiscent of Boris. The other girl, though, Enid Jones; now there’s the kind of girl I like. She seems shy and hardly speaks, and that’s the kind of woman I enjoy.

In any case, they’re still in town tomorrow, and I have a lot of work to do tonight, and not much time for any special activities. I invite them to a ‘private party’ at my suite tomorrow evening at seven. That’ll give me time to iron my kinks out and get to Boris’ meeting at eleven refreshed. I tell them the party will be ‘exclusive’. They don’t know how exclusive it will be; just the three of us.

Shortly after, my phone rings, with some other random problem demanding my attention. I just hope the girls won’t change their minds by tomorrow.

Tonight will be a long night, and I can’t afford to worry about that.



______________________________________________

ENID:

“I’m frit out of my mind,” I confessed. My heart was throbbing something awful.

Marcilla squeezed my hand as we walked up to the doors of Starscream. “Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to you. Just relax and follow my lead. And,” she said, with a quick glance at my gob, “if you can, do try and keep your fangs under control.”

“I’ll do my best,” I muttered. During the day I normally didn’t have much trouble, but it seemed as though the sun only had to set for them to start pushing out. I pulled hard at them and felt them crawl back into my jaw…at least, part of the way.

This early there was nobody at the door except the doorman and he looked at us funnily, as though he wouldn’t want to be in our shoes. Any road, he let us in and took us to the bloke who’d told us last night that Magrat wanted to meet us. Just in time I remembered his name, Marcel something. He took us to the back where there was a lift behind a screen, where nobody who didn’t know about it would likely see it.

“Mr Magrat is up in his suite,” he said. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

“Aye, right.” I thought, but didn’t say anything. The lift itself was posh. I didn’t know lifts came like that, with grey carpet on the floor and a painting on the wall, something in red and yellow and purple, all sweeping curves. I don’t get that kind of art; I don’t know why it’s even called art.

I got a last squeeze of my hand from Marcilla as Marcel Whatever lead us down a short corridor to the doors of Magrat’s suite. He and Magrat had a short natter in German, after which he ushered us in and went away.

I haven’t been in a lot of posh places so I can’t exactly compare it to others but this was a bit much. Thick carpet on the floor I felt guilty to walk with shoes on, paintings on every wall, a sunken centre part with sofas around a polished wood table, potted plants in every corner and that. It made me feel cringey just being there.

Also I immediately felt we were dressed far too fancy. Magrat was in a tee, shorts, and sandals. His tummy was huge but so were his arms, thighs, and shoulders. He looked yoked enough to break me in half if he tried.

“Ladies,” he said, “how nice to see you. Please do sit down and have some drinks.” His back was turned towards us for a moment and I took the chance to have a quick dekko at Marcilla. She shook her head slightly but clearly. Sound, I wouldn’t have any of the drink, then, not even a sip. I wondered what he’d put in them.

“So,” he said, sitting down across from us, “tell me more about yourselves. Where are you from? How did you meet?”

“Won’t that be a bit boring for you?” Marcilla asked. “It is a party, and you must have other guests, so…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” He leant forward and put a huge mitt on her knee. I was glad I was further away because I couldn’t have kept myself from flinching. “I decided to spend the evening only with you two.”

“How kind,” Marcilla said sweetly. “Now, what were you asking? About how we met? Well…”

I didn’t really pay any attention to what she said. I was very aware that he wasn’t either. He was looking at me most of the time, and I had to make a pretence of drinking whatever was in the glass he’d given me, mixed in sherry. Whenever I was sure he wasn’t looking I tipped a bit on the floor. Pity about the posh carpet, but then I hadn’t put things in the drink that shouldn’t be there, had I?

It must have been after near an hour that we’d been sitting there that I clocked that Marcilla was acting a little off. Her voice changed a bit, became a little thicker. She swayed slightly and put her drink down on the table.

Magrat seemed to notice it too, and I saw him smile a bit, so I began mumbling a little and put my glass down as well. I’d managed to pull my fangs almost entirely in – not a problem when I was too bricked to even think of feeding – so I was more or less brash that I wasn’t showing anything I shouldn’t.

“Well, ladies,” he said, getting up. “I take it you two are not exactly…unwilling to have some fun? Especially with each other?”

“No, we like fun.” Marcilla nodded. “We like fun with each other, don’t we, Enid?”

“It’s ace,” I said, stumbling a little as I got up because the heel of my shoe caught in the bloody carpet. “Totally ace.”

“Then,” Magrat said, “why don’t we go to the bedroom and have some fun together? Come this way.”

“Yes.” Marcilla took my arm. “We’re coming.” We followed Magrat into the biggest bedroom I’ve ever seen. It must have been near as big as all of upstairs in my old…I mean, Da’s house. The bed was one of those science fiction things I thought you only had in movies, everything rounded off and blue lighting.

Magrat turned to us. “We’d all be more comfortable without all those clothes, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Marcilla nodded, “it’s so much more fun to be naked, right, Enid?”

I didn’t know what to say so didn’t say anything. Marcilla stepped close, snogged me briefly on the lips, and the next thing I knew was that she was tugging my dress up over my arms and off. And there I was in only my bra, knickers, and shoes.

“Take everything off,” Magrat said. He sounded greedy. I didn’t want to look at him, so I gawked at Marcilla instead as she stripped off. In a brace of shakes she had nothing on, not even her high heels. This was the first time I’d seen her naked in someone else’s company, but she didn’t seem the least bit mortified. I swallowed and pulled my feet out of my shoes and then stood there in my underwear, feeling like a pillock. My mug grew hot with blushing.

“Do you need help undressing, Enid?” Magrat asked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him step towards me, but Marcilla was faster. She stepped up, pressed herself to me, and her arms went round my back and unhooked my bra. Still hugging me, she slid her hands down to my bum, slipped them under my knickers, and pushed them down my thighs.



“Marcilla…” I couldn’t say anything more because she mashed her lips on mine. It gave me a desperate burst of, I don’t know, energy or confidence or summat like. I stepped away far enough to let the bra fall to the floor and my kickers to scrumple down around my ankles. I stepped out of them and was as naked as could be.

Of course I was still bricked and I’d no idea what to do so I just let Marcilla take control. Her tongue licked my lips, sending, despite myself, a thrill to my nips, to my fanny, and down to my toes, and then down the line of my jaw and to my neck. I heard myself groan.

“That’s right,” Magrat said. Marcilla began kissing my throat down towards my tits. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Magrat reach into his shorts. I didn’t want to see that so squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t have kept them open any longer anyway when Marcilla’s tongue began flicking at my nips.

Although getting frisky was the last thing on my mind in front of the thug, my Judas body was moaning and shivering outside my control, and my fanny trickling wetness down my inner thigh. This always happened when I was in Marcilla’s arms, and I couldn’t help it any more than at any other time. I clutched her shoulders and pulled her face against my tits. Somehow I remembered to keep my mouth closed enough to hide my fangs, which were pushing out again the more I lost control.

Marcilla pushed me down on my back and I felt Magrat’s mattress all but suck me in. She held my legs apart and began thrusting against me like a bloke, our clitties bumping together at every thrust. I began to feel myself tightening inside and knew I was about to come. My wet and Marcilla’s mixed together, our flaps bumping as though they were snogging. I had a mind’s eye of what our fannies must look like together, and that was it, I came so hard that my eyes flew open.

The first thing I saw was Magrat with his prong in his hand, frigging himself. His knob was purple.

And, heaven help me, all I wanted to do was laugh and laugh and laugh.

______________________________________________

LOTHAR:

Marcel’s already let me know that the girls are here, so I’m ready and waiting as he precedes them down the corridor from the lift to my suite. “See that I’m not disturbed tonight,” I tell him as he ushers them in. “The driver can go home too.” I’m not going to have Helmut or whatever he’s called drive me to the meeting with Boris, naturally. I’ll drive myself.

“What if there’s a problem?” Marcel asks.

“Then you and Marta handle it or postpone it till tomorrow night.” I sometimes wonder why I am paying Marcel his considerable salary if he can’t even understand things like this on his own account. “Did you make sure the special drinks are inside?” I make sure to keep my voice unchanged and don’t look at the girls when I ask this.

“Of course, Herr Magrat.” He bows slightly and withdraws.

I switch my language, and my thinking, to English, and turn to the women with a smile. Marcilla smiles back and something sends a chill down my spine. I hadn’t noticed before how oddly red her eyes are, and there’s again that something almost feral in her smile. I have a very brief thought that I may be making the biggest mistake of my life, but that’s clearly absurd. I’m Lothar Magrat, and they’re just eighteen year old girls. If I’d changed my mind based on hunches and shivers I’d never have got where I am now.

I serve them the spiked drinks – there’s just enough drugs in them to reduce inhibitions, I don’t want to start in on the hard stuff just yet – and make conversation. Once again it’s Marcilla who does all the talking. I keep glancing at Enid but she never says a word. If the level of drink in her glass hadn’t been reducing each time I look at her I wouldn’t believe she ever opened her mouth at all.

I’ll have to do something about this later. I want Enid to talk, I want her to beg, I want her to squeal.

After a while the drugs seem to finally be taking effect. Marcilla readily agrees that they need to have fun, and she and Enid follow me to the bedroom, where Marcilla strips easily. Enid is really too shy, and I’m about to go take her underwear off for her but Marcilla gets there first. I feel a brief fit of irritation but what the girls get up to next washes that away.

I must admit Marcilla is good. She still gives me a little frisson of uneasiness whenever she looks at me, but she’s tender with her girl and very, very good. As she thrusts at Enid, making her moan, I can’t contain myself any longer and begin stroking myself.

My plans are clear; I’ll let them pleasure each other and me until it’s time for me to leave for Boris’ meeting. Then I’ll suggest they have some more drinks, the drinks loaded with the harder stuff, so that they’ll sleep until I get back. Then the real fun can begin.

I might even keep them here for a while. They’re peripatetic foreign tourists, wandering the continent on their bicycles; who’s going to miss them for three or four days? And when I’m done with them, assuming that they want to complain, well, the threat of sending Mummy and Daddy the videos and photos that I’ll take will nip that right in the bud. It’s worked every time so far.

Enid has just climaxed, moaning and writhing. Marcilla looks up from her, and, without ceasing her thrusting of her hips against the other girl’s, reaches out her hand towards me.

“Stop diddling yourself,” she says. “Take off your clothes and get over here.”

And, once more fighting down that strange feeling that there’s something menacing about this situation, that’s what I do.

______________________________________________

ENID:

As I fought down the laugh trying to burst out of me, Marcilla gave her fanny a final bump against mine and turned to Magrat as he pulled off his tee and lumbered towards us. He was staring right at me where I was lying spread out and starkers, and I wanted to cover myself, but Marcilla had told me earlier to let him look at me if he wanted, so I didn’t. I pushed me up on my elbows and crawled back up on the bed as far as I could go, because I didn’t want him too close. But my legs were still spread wide and my wet was still dripping from my fanny. I must have looked a sight.

“Lothar,” Marcilla murmured. She slipped behind him as he reached the bed. “Why don’t you show our Enid what a real man feels like, hmm?”



I stared at her gobsmacked, but before I could decide what to say Magrat had crawled on to the bed and was knee-walking towards me, his purple knob pointing at my tits. And then Marcilla was behind him on the bed, put one arm around his chest, and pulled him back against her boobs while her mouth tracked down the side of his jaw. I think he thought it was some kind of game because a stupid grin came on his mug, and his half turned towards her.

It didn’t last long because her arm suddenly went tight, holding him in place, and her fangs flashed once in the blue light before she sank them into the side of his fat throat.

On that soft mattress it took me a moment or two to get myself turned around and up on my hands and knees, by which time Magrat was on his back, his peepers rolled up in their sockets, and groaning something awful. Marcilla glanced up at me, Magrat’s blood black on her lips and fangs in the blue light, and indicated his arm.

I found a likely spot and slid my fangs in.

Afterwards we quickly dressed in the lounge room. Marcilla thought a moment, then took a bottle from the table and filled up the glasses we’d been pretending to drink from. “Help me,” she said.

I trailed her back to the bedroom where Magrat was still out of it, moaning a little. “Hold up his head a bit,” Marcilla told me. “I don’t want him to choke.”

I did, and she trickled the drink from first one glass and then the other into his gob. I held his head until it’d all gone down his throat. “That should keep him for a while,” she said. “Long enough for us to get out of here, anyway. But, first, let’s check this place for hidden cameras. I’ll be surprised if we don’t find any, especially in the bedroom.”

While scouring around the bedroom I pulled aside a curtain, expecting a window, but what I found instead was a huge round safe door set in the wall. There was no way I could open it, so I didn’t even try. But below it, also set in the wall, was a small cabinet. I pulled open the door, blinked at what was inside, and called Marcilla. “Take a gander at this!”

The cabinet was loaded with whips, hoods, ball gags and handcuffs; not the kind of BDSM rubbish velvet lined handcuffs Trace once showed me, both of us giggling and rolling our eyes, on her phone; but the real stuff, the heavy duty plastic ones you see on the telly on the copper shows. “What d’you make of these?” I asked.

Marcilla bit her lip. “That he probably intended to employ them on us,” she said. “And probably not for the first time either. These have been used.”

“I don’t understand.”

She picked up one of the ball gags. “Look.” Even I could clock the bite marks. “See?”

I saw, all too well. “So what should we do about this?”

Marcilla shrugged. “Not much we can do, except…” a cheeky glint came in her eye. She picked up one of the handcuffs, walked over to Magrat, snapped one end over his wrist and the other to the bedside table. “That should take him some time to get out of,” she said.

“Not it one of his people comes here first,” I said.

“They won’t. He told his manager Marcel not to disturb him tonight for any reason. Now let’s look for those cameras.”

In the end we found two, both tiny and fancy digital jobs. One was hidden in a pot plant, pointing at the foot of the bed, and the other in a painting on the wall. Marcilla ripped them both out and put them inside her handbag. “We’ll destroy them later. No point leaving footage of us naked or feeding. That’s the kind of thing that draws…” she mimicked the git who kept appearing to us, the one she called the Visitor…”unwanted attention.”

I giggled. “You tart, you gave me a turn when I thought you were actually offering me up to him!”

She stared at me. “Enid, I promised you that you wouldn’t have to have sex with him, didn’t I?” I blushed and she shook her head. “Never mind.” She took a dekko at the clock on the wall. “It’s almost eleven. Our work’s done. We should leave.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” I asked. “I mean, his whole staff is down there, and…”

“We’ll just walk out, as though we’ve every right to, and nobody will even think of challenging us. You’ll see.”

And, again, she was right. We did, and nobody did.

______________________________________________

LOTHAR:

I wake with a head feeling like a chunk of wood someone has cleft with an axe in two. For a long moment I'm not sure where I am, then the realisation hits; I’m in bed and I have to get to Boris’ meeting! Now! Right now! It’s due at eleven and I have no time to lose!

I try to scramble to my feet, but something’s holding me back. It’s one of my own handcuffs, shackling me to the bedside table. I stare at it in bafflement, wondering how it got there, and then suddenly I remember; there were two girls here.

Where the hell are they?

I try to think, but my memories are jumbled and confused. I have a vague recollection of them naked, having sex with each other here on the bed, and then Enid splayed out invitingly while Marcilla urged me to do her. But after that my brain can only serve up half-comprehensible images and sensations; Marcilla’s lips on my neck, a faint burning sensation in my body, Enid crawling towards me with…were those sharp teeth poking out from under her upper lip? I shake my head; this is all rubbish. I have to get free first.

It takes me a several minutes of violent wrenching before I can break the table strut enough to free my wrist. It shouldn’t have taken so long; it’s a thin piece of wood and I’m strong. But when I get to my feet I stagger; I’m dizzy and weak, far weaker than I’ve any right to be. What did they do to me?

My first thought, of course, is for my safe; did those two bitches drug and handcuff me to rob me? But when I stagger to it and open it, the money’s all still there, just as I’d left it. So what did they want to do this to me for?

First things first, my mind screams at me. The money…it’s for Boris, for the meeting. The meeting is at eleven. I have to get to the meeting.

Then my eyes go to the clock on the wall and my heart seems to freeze. It’s almost five in the morning.

What the fuck!

I scramble to get to my other phone, the special non-smart one, looking for calls or messages from Boris, but there’s nothing. I punch out his number from memory, and listen to the ringing, but there’s no answer.

I have to take some time to think, to find some way to sort all this out. I can’t do that here, not with confusion and panic battling with my splitting headache and weakness.

Home, I think. My wife’s gone off to Greece, so I can go home and not have to subject myself to her presence. I stagger over to the walk in wardrobe and pull out the first suit my hands reach and I struggle into it, not bothering with the tie.

When I come out of the lift on the main floor I find Marta and Marcel talking. They stare at me curiously; I wonder what I look like. Unshaven, certainly; maybe red-eyed and hungover-looking? It doesn’t matter, they can think what they like as long as they do what I tell them to do. I beckon to Marta.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re still here? Good. I want you to track down those two whores…Marcilla Karnstein and Enid Jones. Send someone to their hotel. Keep them under observation, every minute, until I decide what to do with them. You understand me?”

She nods. “Right away.”

Marcel begins to come over as Marta leaves but I wave him off. I don’t want to hear anything about the nightclub’s business right now. I want to get home and try and find a way to contact Boris and sort this out.

Then I’ll get my hands on those two bints and make them pay for whatever they did to me. Nobody humiliates Lothar Magrat and gets away with it.

I go outside to my car, striving hard to walk normally so nobody thinks I’m drunk. I’m not used to being out this early in the morning, with the dawn streets empty, and the temptation to put the accelerator down to the floor is great. I resist it somehow; I have problems enough without police stopping me for a traffic violation. Instead, I take it slow, letting the breeze through the open window flow across my face and try and cool my mind.

I’ve just reached home, parked, and got out of my car when my phone, the main one, buzzes. It’s Marta.

“Sir…they checked out of the hotel last night, just before midnight. They didn’t leave any forwarding address.”

Of course, I think bitterly. Of bloody course they checked out.

Marta is still talking. “Sir, about the redecoration of the back rooms, we…”

I cut her off. “Tell me later. I don’t have time for it now.” I push the phone into my pocket and reach for my door key, intent on getting inside.

Probably it’s because I’m still distracted and headachy that I don’t notice the movement behind me until it’s too late. Hands like iron grip my arms, there’s a sharp sting on the inside of my wrist, and everything fades to black.

There’s someone slapping my face, with sharp short slaps. My arms are drawn painfully behind me, my wrists are chafed with ropes, and I feel the back of a hard chair against my shoulders, its seat digging into the back of my knees. I moan and open my eyes.

A face swims into focus. A head like a block of stone, with a short goatee under deep-set grey eyes, thin lips pressed together.

Boris.

“Magrat. It’s so nice to see that you’re back with us.” He’s dropped the exaggerated Slavic accent that he normally affects, he’s speaking crisply now, not bothering to omit articles. “After all, you weren’t with us last night, so thank you for gracing us with your company now.”

I try to talk, but my mouth is dry as the Sahara and my tongue refuses to move. My eyes swivel, trying to see where I am. It’s probably a warehouse, all bare concrete walls and gloomy interiors. Boris takes a step forwards and bends to stare me in the face.

“So, you see, when we came here, last night, on the dot of eleven, we were expecting you, but you weren’t there, were you?” He pauses, as though expecting me to say something, but all I can manage is another moan. “Now, I understand, sometimes one can be late, held up in traffic, or got a flat tyre. I make allowances for that.” He steps back again and folds his arms across his chest. “But do you know what I don’t make allowances for, Magrat? When instead of you coming, we get attacked by the Albanians. My men and I had to abandon the entire consignment. We were lucky to escape with our lives. The Albanian mob has the consignment and I’ll have to fight a war, or else pay whatever they want, to get it back.” He leans in again, his grey eyes slitted. “Now can you tell me, Magrat, how the hell the Albanians knew we were there and had that stuff with us? Wasn’t this a secret deal, just between you and me? Well?”

My mind blanks out. I can’t process everything that’s happening all at the same time.

Boris nods, as though he got a reply anyway. “All right, Taras,” he says, softly.

Taras-the-Blade appears in the corner of my field of vision, and as he moves in, one totally irrelevant thought floats up in my head.

I should have invested in that bodyguard after all.

______________________________________________

MARCILLA:

We were out of town and the sky was pale with dawn when I pedalled to a stop. “Let’s take a break,” I said. “We can sit under the trees out of sight of the road and catch our breaths.”

Enid winced and rubbed her thighs. “I can’t believe you made me pedal that fast. I felt like I was on one of those bike races on the telly.”

“That’s better than having Magrat send his minions after us,” I told her. “You can be certain that he’s out for revenge.” I picked up both bicycles, one under each arm, and climbed off the road until we were far under the cover of the trees. “This looks like a likely spot.”

“I’m chuffed that we’re done with that lot,” Enid said, slumping down with her back to the same tree as mine and spreading her legs out. “I felt, you know…dirty.”

“You did extremely well,” I said, and kissed her. The nubs of her fangs nipped my lip. “Ouch! What’s that for?”

“For making me love you so much.” She put her head on my shoulder. “I wonder what the hotel will do with those dresses and shoes we left.”

“I hope the cleaning staff takes them,” I said. “Someone might as well get some use out of them.”

“I hated dressing up like that.” Enid pulled off her boots and socks and wriggled her toes in the grass. “Where should we go next?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t decided. We’ll see. There are still so many things to show you…and so much to teach you.”

I felt her stiffen against my arm. “Oh no, not again.”

“Yes, again,” I said, and bent my head to kiss her hair. “So, tell me, what are the different kinds of wards?”

She groaned. “You’re evil.”

“I know,” I laughed. “Believe me, I know.”

______________________________________________

[Author’s Note:

I know nothing about the inner workings of nightclubs, and it’s not often that I write from the point of view of a male character. So please excuse me for any inaccuracies and errors. Thanks!

- Anna R.]

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