Getting over the wall had been a bitch; getting Paul to come with her had been worse. For about the fiftieth time, Rowena silently cursed the punks, Satanist wanna-bes and street rats who had used the old cemetery as their own private party space, temple and crash pad with absolutely zero discretion. A few years ago, new, higher razor-wire topped walls had replaced the old ones. Oh, well, she thought, as they sat and rested in the recessed doorway of a big tomb, at least there were fewer security patrols now that it was so tough to get in. She tossed her blue-black hair impatiently back over her shoulders and packed away the wire cutters and the rope that they had used, trying to ignore Paul glaring silently at her from the opposite bench.
Unable to stand it anymore, he finally began scolding her in a harsh whisper. "This is ridiculous, Rowena. Jesus Christ, we're not sixteen anymore. Do you know how badly it would mess things up to get caught doing this? Why couldn't we just do your little experiments in daylight?"
She sighed. They'd had this conversation a thousand times, most of them on the way over here, but Paul was a master at pretending he didn't remember an argument he'd already lost. "Yeah, great, so we record the tape in the daytime, and instead of spirit recordings, we get Uncle Ronald and Aunt Velma weeding Great-grandma Sophia's grave, and some damned tourist looking for where Valentino is buried. You know we can only get valid results in a noise-free environment, and that the only time Hollywood Memorial is noise-free is at one in the morning. You didn't have to come, but you did, so now could you please shut up?"
He didn't take the hint. "What was I supposed to do, let you come alone? I just can't believe this is important enough to risk getting arrested over. We have a life now, Rowena. We have a marriage, and a mortgage, and a three-year-old daughter. Isn't it about time to give up your little obsession with the macabre and move on?"
She stared at him in outrage, her black eyes flashing. "Oh, screw you, Paul. I'm a good Mom, and a good wife, and you know it. And I don't bitch about all the time you spend on the computer, do I? I refuse to give up who I am, just because the middle-class handbook says `Thou shalt become boring on thy thirtieth birthday.' Anyway, do you really think the time to argue about this is while sitting in front of some movie star's tomb in the middle of the night?"
Paul sighed. He looked away, silent for a moment, and when he looked back, he was smiling. "Yeah, okay. I guess the adrenaline got to me. I knew you were sick and twisted when I married you, and I guess I'm stuck with you. Tell me where you want the tape set and I'll go leave it, and then we can settle in someplace out of the way and wait. How long are we recording for?"
She smiled back, aware that this was as close to an apology as she was going to get. "It's sixty minutes. Can you take the tape deck and leave it down in the sunken garden, close to the mausoleum? The energy is pretty strange down there. I'll meet you around the lake, near where we used to picnic. It's away from the road, and the patrols are by car. Thanks, Paul. I promise we'll never do a cemetery that's this hard to get into again." He kissed her and disappeared down the steps across the road.
After checking for Security and inwardly blessing her usual all-black dress and tights for their camouflage, she ran around the lake to the bench by an old tree which was their old picnic spot. She and Paul had spent a lot of time here when they were younger, reading Byron and Yeats to each other, or quoting from "The Oxford Book of Death." He had indulged her passion for memento mori despite not really understanding it, which was one of the reasons why she had married him.
She curled up on the bench behind the tree and settled in to wait for Paul, savoring the quiet and the moonlight on the small lake, but when she looked around, she noticed something odd about the big tomb which faced the lake several yards away. She got up and went closer to examine it. On reaching the base of the steps, she realized what was wrong - the heavy bronze door, which had always been locked before, was open a couple of feet.
The family must have visited and forgot to lock up, she thought. Intrigued, she went up the steps. She had peered inside the stone building before through the wire-grilled window, but had never been inside any of the carefully locked tombs, and she wasn't about to pass this up. She would love a chance to lounge on the big granite sepulchre and soak up the funereal atmosphere. Besides, it would be a great place to wait for the tape to finish, if she could get Paul to come inside.
It looked pitch-black from the steps, but there had to be some light reaching the interior through the window. As she gained the top step, turning to see if Paul was coming yet, she caught a flash of white from the corner of her eye. Then an ice-cold hand was clamped over her mouth and another grasped her waist and yanked her into the darkness of the tomb. She was pulled up roughly against an unyielding body as the tomb door was firmly kicked shut.
Terrified and infuriated, she fought to get free, kicking and writhing against the rock-hard body holding her. She pulled at the hand covering her mouth, trying to get out a sound louder than the muffled squeaks she was making. When she tried to bite, her head was twisted sideways to face her attacker, still invisible in the darkness, and a chilling voice hissed in her ear, "Stop it and keep quiet, or I'll break your neck." She felt the strength in the hand on her mouth and knew he could do it.
She went still, frantically trying to think of a way to alert Paul and get away. She tried to calculate the probabilities: had she stumbled upon a homeless lunatic? Had some gang member followed them over the wall? Her speculations were cut short when her eyes finally adjusted to the dim light in the tomb and she was able to see his face, inches from her own.
He was utterly pale, almost luminous in the moonlight, with blond hair falling around a bone-thin face. His eyes glowed an inhuman red with his anger at her struggles, a color which faded to a deep brown as he saw her growing terror. He smiled, pleased with her fear, and as she watched, his canine teeth extended into cat-like fangs. -- Sure, just your average undead homeless guy -- she thought hysterically -- God, I wish I could believe those teeth were prosthetics.--
He laughed quietly as she went stiff with horror against him. His head came up, listening, and he moved to the window, dragging her with him. "Relax," he whispered, turning her head back to face the wire mesh opening. "This is a lovely location, with a very nice vista on the lake. Why don't you enjoy the view?"
She looked out on the moonlit graveyard, and saw a figure moving toward the lake from the road. It was Paul, she realized, and he was approaching their meeting place! "See anything interesting?" her captor asked. "Why don't you think of it as one of those `find the hidden bunny' pictures? Only in this case, the caption is `find the hidden vampire'."
Despite his threat she couldn't keep from moaning when she spotted the white face behind Paul, moving with him as he looked for her. Although the figure was close enough to touch Paul, it was obvious that he noticed nothing. As she watched, a white hand waved. The face grinned cheerily. Her head was yanked sideways and her captor looked down into her eyes.
"Here's the deal," he whispered, smiling. "You stay silent, and he stays breathing. One noise, and my friend rips his head off and uses it to bowl for ducks. Your choice, of course," he continued, as he let her go and stepped away from her. "Either way, I get an evening's entertainment complete with dinner."
He cocked his head and looked at her, watching for her reaction. As she stayed frozen and silent, thinking of Paul, thinking of little Lily, safe at home, the monster smiled smugly down at her. "Good choice," he whispered. Then, laying one hand on her shoulder, he pulled her gently out of the light from the window and into the shadows. He pushed her down onto the wide stone sarcophagus, then sat beside her, silently, as they listened to the ever closer sounds of Paul searching for her outside.
It seemed like forever until Paul's search moved away from the tomb and silence descended. They sat, listening, until her captor seemed to hear what he was waiting for. He stood up, facing her. "Good," he said, sounding satisfied. "Your friend went right to security, and they threw him out. And since my friend already took care of the patrol for this part of the graveyard, we won't have any interruptions until morning. Isn't that lovely?"
He looked at her as she sat crying silently, with her chin resting on her raised knees, and looked chagrined. "I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Shelley, and I'll be your host for the evening."
"What do you want?" she managed to gasp out.
"You mean aside from the obvious?" He bent to her and gripped her shoulders, staring into her eyes. "All I want," he murmured, "is to give you what you've always wanted, what all good little goth girls and boys hope for. You were trolling in the graveyard, sweetheart, begging for my attention. And you've got it. All night. Congratulations."
She barely had time to moan "No-" before his icy mouth descended on hers. His lips forced hers open as he shoved her legs roughly down from her chest and then kicked them apart, stepping between them. He put an arm around her and pulled her hard to the edge of the stone coffin. His mouth on hers, his tongue probing between her lips; his body between her legs and his arms around her - she felt surrounded by the chill of the grave.
She struggled to escape from his numbing embrace. When he lifted his head to look at her, she gasped, "cold, God, you're so cold..."
"Then warm me," he snarled through extended fangs, as he stepped back and slammed her to her knees on the stone floor. He kept one hand hard on her shoulder while he pulled open his black leather pants. His erect cock sprang out, gleaming white in the faint light.
She tried to pull away, but he fisted one hand in her hair and slapped her viciously with the other, hard enough to make her almost brown out. "Open it, bitch," he hissed, his formerly cool voice sounding guttural and animal-like. "And no biting - that's my prerogative." He slapped her again, and she tasted blood. She heard herself moan. Her jaw went slack, and he forced his cock deep into her mouth.
It was liking having a stone phallus rammed into her, too icy cold and hard to be human flesh. He probed the back of her throat and gave a satisfied sigh when she gagged and fought to pull her head back for air. He allowed her a little breath, then shoved his cock home deep in her throat. Then he pulled it out and rammed her again. And again. He fucked her face, using his hand in her hair to move her up and down his length.
She gasped and struggled, tears streaming down her face, snot and phlegm filling her nose and throat, making it even more difficult to breathe even as it slicked his passage. It seemed to go on forever, her inhuman rapist hissing his pleasure through his teeth as she moaned and struggled to get air, the wet noises of his shoving himself into her echoing off the stone walls.
She was lost in the feeling of what he was doing to her, and being used by him was becoming her whole reality, when he stopped fucking her suddenly and pulled out of her mouth, leaving her sobbing and shuddering on the floor. She stared up at him through her tears and saw that his head was up, listening.
Moments later she heard a voice. "Knock, knock."
Her vampire lover laughed. "Who's there?"
"Karl."
"Karl, who?" Shelley sang back, as he left her to go and open the door. Rowena scuttled into the corner of the tomb and curled there, watching, as a second figure entered and joined her tormentor.
The second vampire was taller than Shelley, with a stronger, more massive shape. He was dressed in simple jeans and a plain black shirt, unlike Shelley's dramatic black leather and white poet's shirt. His dark hair was held back from his face in a queue.
He didn't even look at her, but closed the door and turned to Shelley. "Gods, Shel, I hope this adventure is worth it. I've got three guards taken out, two permanently, and your prey's companion will be bringing the cops as soon as he can. This place will be about as safe for us as a sun porch after tomorrow. I knew you were crazy, but this..." Rowena felt a surge of hope at hearing her new captor; perhaps in him she could find an ally against the vicious, taunting monster who had taken her.
She rose up on her knees and wiped her tears away, coughing to clear her voice as she looked up at him and said "please...let me go and I'll never tell anyone"- She broke off, hearing how lame she sounded, how pathetic, as he turned to face her, seeming to notice her for the first time. Shelley turned, too, grinning, his eyes bright and interested.
Karl stared down at her, his light eyes almost colorless in the dim light. He inhaled, sniffing delicately at the dank air, and muttered, "couldn't wait to make her bleed, could you, Shelley?" He moved quickly towards her, like a cat, and knelt in front of her. She gazed up at him with wide, tear-bright eyes as he brought his finger up to brush the trickle of blood flowing from her torn lip. He lifted the drop of blood to his mouth and licked it off, and she watched, horrified, while his fangs distended and his light eyes began to gleam red.
Shelley laughed and stood behind him, his hands on Karl's shoulders. "How could I resist, Karl? I've always been so amused by the little goth babies with their black clothes and pale skin and vampire bite tattoos. All that make-believe death, and I can smell the life in them a mile away. Besides, you know how hard it is to get good food delivered in Hollywood-"
"Shut up, Shel," Karl said, quietly, still looking at Rowena. "How about it, baby?" he murmured to her. "Is this everything you hoped it would be? A secret meeting with your vampire lovers in a tomb?"
She shook her head, started to deny that this was ever what she wanted (and knowing all the time that she was lying), but he cut her off, shaking his head and laying his finger over her lips. "Shhh, love, it really doesn't matter now, what you want. We want you." And he reached for her, pulling her up against him, licking the blood from her lip.
His mouth was cold but tender, gentle after Shelley's savage assault. He kissed her as she leaned against him, whimpering, her faint hopes dashed, his soft caress somehow worse than the brutality that had come before. She knew that he could no more be dissuaded from taking her than could Shelley, and that his patient touch reflected no more than a self-control that could break at any time. Shuddering and moaning into his mouth, her will shattered at last when she felt Shelley lay a hand on her shoulder and she realized that what Karl had said was true. She had flirted with death, as so many had before -- but for her, death had finally responded to her overtures. Now it was death's desire, and not hers, that counted. Gentle or brutal, the result was the same: her destruction.
When the will to survive left her, abandoning her to her fate, she found her thoughts clearing. She was able for the first time to take in her surroundings, to feel what was happening to her and to acknowledge how she was responding. Kneeling on the cold stone floor, embraced by a lover no warmer than the stone, she smelled the musty odor of the damp tomb. She felt the lingering ache in the back of her throat from the brutal pounding of Shelley's cock, and the stinging of her cut lip, the wound kept open by Karl's worrying of it with his tongue and teeth. And she realized that she was wet between her legs, had been wet since she was first forced to her knees. Despite her, her body had been responding all along.
With that thought, her last bit of self-preservation melted into a rush of desire, a lust to be taken, to be used, to be consumed. She pressed her body against Karl's and was rewarded with a moan and the forceful pressure of his mouth as he forced hers open to receive his tongue. The blood, her mouth, and her suddenly willing body seemed to overwhelm him, and he staggered to his feet, dragging her up with him.
He pulled his mouth off of hers and growled to Shelley, "get these damned clothes off of her." She felt Shelley's cool hands as they unzipped her black jersey dress, stroking along her backbone with one fingernail. Then he pushed the dress down her body as she dropped her arms obediently, then stepped out of it. Karl's hands made icy paths up her sides to her bared breasts, finding the nipple rings and tugging on them gently at first, and then more roughly as desire began to overwhelm him. She braced her hands on his shoulders, bringing her arms up and out of the way, so that he could toy with her more freely. Shelley groaned as he watched, stopped bothering with the pretense of self-control he had affected since Karl's return, and reached between Rowena's legs to shred her black tights. He bared her wet cunt and ass, leaving the remnants of the ripped tights around her thighs. His fingers found and plunged into her open hole, then pulled out, leaving her gasping and pushing herself backward against him, begging to be entered again.
Shelley laughed, a guttural, feral sound, and grabbed one of Karl's hands away from Rowena's breast, bringing it down and pressing it between her legs, giving Karl unmistakable evidence of her readiness. "Take her, goddamnit, I can't wait anymore," Shelley hissed, and dragged Rowena backwards out of Karl's arms, slamming her hard onto the large sarcophagus.
Karl, his glowing eyes heavy-lidded, fangs dripping saliva onto her bared breasts, followed her down, unzipping his pants and freeing himself. She writhed and moaned, thrusting upwards, feeling so empty, desperate to be filled. He plunged into her with one thrust, bruising her tender flesh, the rough fabric of his jeans rubbing against her bare upper thighs, his shirt scratching her breasts. She felt desperately vulnerable, her bare ass and back against the rough stone, her unclothed body helpless, the bitter cold of his rigid cock inside her, his frigid body searing her even through his clothes. He fucked her, hard, becoming less controlled, more savage with each thrust, as Shelley thrust two fingers into her mouth and stroked Karl's back.
Shelley knelt next to the coffin, staring into her passion-filmed eyes from inches away, talking softly to her. "What a pretty little whore you are, you'll give it all up to us, won't you, not just your little slut's body, you'll give your life, your soul, that's it, beg for it, beg him to take you, you'll beg me to kill you when the time is right, yesss..." He growled and shoved at Karl, who incoherently hissed back, but rolled over bringing Rowena with him so that she was on top of him, her breasts hanging down, his cock still deep inside her. He leaned up and took one ringed nipple into his mouth, tugging on the ring with his teeth, careful not to bite her. She semi-coherently wondered what he was waiting for, when she felt Shelley's hand forcing her body down.
Karl lay back on the stone and Rowena pressed forward against his chest as she felt the leather of Shelley's pants against her thighs and his cold, hard body through the thin silk shirt pressing down on her back. She realized what he was about to do as he rubbed his cock along her wet ass and cunt, pressing it against the base of Karl's cock, making him moan and thrust into her harder, bruising her womb. She felt a thrill of fear through her at the thought of his stone-hard cock opening her ass, and she whimpered and struggled, but the two of them held her in place easily, making her efforts seem as ineffectual as a bird's beating against its cage.
Finally, slick enough from her body's juices, Shelley forced her open with his cock while his hand came up to muffle her shriek of pain. He tore into her, not bothering to wait for her to open for him, and began to fuck her savagely. She could feel both cocks rubbing together inside her with only a thin wall between them, sure with each thrust that they would tear her completely open. She had never felt so filled, so completed, and the pain began to seem sweet as she writhed and impaled herself on their cocks. As the smell of blood from her rended asshole reached Karl, he growled and buried his face in her neck, licking and nipping, seeking her pulse.
Shelley laughed and bent to whisper in her ear. "Beg, pretty one. Beg for his teeth in your neck. You know you ache for it. You need it. Beg..."
Almost before the first words had left his mouth, she had begun a wordless keening, baring her throat, pressing it against Karl's mouth, praying for him to savage her. Soon, she was pleading with them both: "Please, take me, use me, yes, I need it, break me, I was made for it, Gods, please....."
With a growl, Shelley lowered his mouth to her neck and ripped at her throat with his teeth. The first sweet tang of blood scent pushed Karl over the edge entirely and he savaged the other side of her throat as both continued to fuck her. Her scream, muffled by Shelley's hand yet again, seemed endless to her.
The pain was terrible, soul-destroying, but worse was the cold. She could still feel her body responding, her cunt and ass widening to accept their invaders, her tender nipples sending thrills through her when the rings caught against Karl's chest as she was fucked. She was spiraling upward toward some terrible peak of pleasure, but the biting cold - around her, inside her -was devouring her. She felt as if her whole spirit was being drained from her into her two terrible masters as her blood drained out. And as her blood drained, sucked eagerly from wounds in her neck which they continually tore at in their passion, she realized that their bodies grew warmer even as hers grew chill.
Their skin began to feel feverish as it rubbed against hers. Their cocks grew hot, expanding even larger in her torn passages. And as her body reached toward its peak, her mind, her soul, fell away. At the last, as they shoved in unison even deeper and shot hot fluid stinging into her cunt and ass, as they growled and ripped at her throat, and as she was forced over the edge of her own climax, she realized that her shrieks were no more than whimpers, that her thoughts were fading, and that her pounding heart was stuttering and failing. She took what little life she had left, and tried to send it winging out of this tomb to her husband and daughter, the life she had left behind.
At the last moment, as her consciousness flickered out, she felt something pressed to her bruised mouth. The taste at first was horrible, repellent, and then she summoned the strength to grab the wrist that was pressed to her lips and hold it even closer, sucking hard at the small wound.
She heard a voice from far away exclaiming blurrily, "You idiot! What the hell are you doing?" And then another laughing voice answering, "Just think of it as tipping the delivery girl."
She regained a little more consciousness as someone (Shelley, her brain reluctantly informed her) was zipping her into her dress like a doll and crooning nonsense to her, while another, Karl, stomped angrily around the tomb, ranting about insanity breeding true, and extra mouths to feed. Finally, as the sky outside the small window greyed, she watched as Shelley shoved aside the stone top of the sarcophagus. "Come on, baby, you're sleeping with us today. Well, us and the late Ms. Davies. But don't worry, she's a heavy sleeper." She tried to resist being lifted into the stone box to lie on bones and the remnants of grave clothing, but Shelley forced her down onto his chest, and Karl, muttering, climbed in after her.
Shelley laughed. "That's the wonderful thing about these overpriced tombs - king-size beds!"
"Shel, I swear I'm going to stake you..." As the morning sleep overtook her, she thought of her daughter's golden hair, the color that she had once had, until she dyed it to black. The color of the sun, she thought, Lily's hair is the color of the sun. And then all her own thoughts faded, and stopped. And she slept the sleep of the dead.