Clarissa Part 3 – The Meeting

Clarissa wasn’t surprised by the décor. But then she hadn’t known quite what to expect. If she had given herself time to contemplate she might have imagined a crypt, dark, dank and oh so clichéd, or perhaps a penthouse suite occupied by smartly dressed, handsome, fearsome looking members of the undead. Her experience of the last six months had taught her not to expect the obvious from her new “life”, this wasn’t a hammer movie with Peter Cushing about to leap out and press a cross into her forehead, nor was a cool, razor-witted ninja waiting around the next corner to slay her with his titanium “Samurai” sword.

She wore a skirt, very short, very Goth, very appropriate, or so she had thought. Sitting on the sofa in the front room of a suburban bungalow on the floral print fabric sofa it looked a little incongruous. Clarissa found herself keeping her legs together and to the side, hands clasped and resting on her knees. She regretted the deeply plunging neckline of her top and the rich purple-red of her lipstick. The awful gaudy, outdated carpet seemed to draw her eye, her normally level stare transformed into the meek downward gaze of an errant pupil called to the headmaster’s office.

Facing her were three menacing individuals. They represented the one third of the Others, they spoke for the whole group, their authority was absolute. The six remaining members were there too, in spirit if not in a corporeal sense, they spoke to each other without words, in the same way they had called her here. She had heard the summons to this place in her mind, she had tried to ignore it. But it was like a stone in her shoe, she could think around it but it would keep reminding her, prodding her, making its presence felt until she obeyed their call.

~~~

Clarissa and Ben stood on the grass looking out across the landscape  painted silver-grey by the bright moon. The party’s booming music becoming less distinct with each step they took towards the copse that overlooked the house. They were holding hands, Clarissa leading him, struggling to disguise her impatience.

“I never knew you felt like this about me.” Said Ben. “In fact I thought you hadn’t even noticed me.”

“I didn’t notice you. Until tonight. But people change.” She licked her lips, the taste of his semen still fresh on them.

They reached the copse, disappearing almost at once within the dense stems of the coppiced ash and broad boles of the trees. Clarissa leant back against the riven bark of a mature oak. Ben leaned in to kiss her to be stopped by Clarissa’s raised index finger on his lips.

She dropped her hand and lifted the hem of her skirt to reveal her soaking red panties. The invitation needed no RSVP, simply his attendance and undivided attention. His knees hit the damp leaf mould, the dampness of the ground soaking into his designer jeans.

She felt his fingers tug at her inconsequential underwear, exposing her wet lips. His tongue probed her carefully manicured mons, drinking in its overwhelming aroma and thirsting for the soft molten flesh inside. Clarissa moaned as he enveloped her clitoris.

~~~

She’d never met the Others before, having avoided the inevitable parley like a condemned man avoiding the drop. She could feel their presence and their distain for her. If she hadn’t felt so intimidated she would have been glaring her resentment back at them.

One was standing behind the opposing sofa and appeared to be in his forties, the other two, seated, were apparently a couple, outwardly in their mid sixties, though their souls stretched back much further. She slid her mind into their pasts and fell through two centuries of their lives before they felt her probing and threw up a wall in their minds to stop her.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you dear” said the female half of the couple. Her voice was quiet, refined, charming.

“Oh? Really, do what?” Replied Clarissa feigning innocence, but the rebellion in her voice was surfacing. Or was the steel in her voice a product of fear? She felt cornered and aggrieved at having being summoned, like a wayward pet recalled to its master’s side.

“My mind is my own. Step inside there again and I’ll show you things that will tear your sanity to shreds.” Her thin lip cured into a snarl, though her voice remained urbane and level. She smiled, Clarissa found the smile even more disturbing than the snarl. “And then I’ll rip your throat out.”

“Can we get on?” asked the youngest of the three. “I have an early flight tomorrow and I need to feed.”

“Of course Timothy.” Replied the woman, she turned to Clarissa “I think you know why you were asked here.”

“Indulge me.” Clarissa’s spirit overwhelmed her trepidation, though the moment the words had left her lips she regretted them.

“Your nature is not compatible with the Code. A fact that your attitude tonight confirms.” Impatience in the old woman’s voice bubbled just below her veneer of composure. “You have two choices, either change your nature and continue your existence as a member of the undead, or forfeit your existence.”

~~~

Ben’s hands gripped her thighs, pressing her against the tree. Her hands gripped his head, pressing him into her groin. Ben wasn’t about to leave the task at hand half completed, his tongue slid across her labia, massaged her clitoris, dipped into her fiery opening.

Clarissa’s head rolled backward, eyes staring blindly at the canopy above her and the stars beyond. Her breath came shallow and fast, the moisture in it condensing in the rapidly cooling air. Rapt by the ripples of pleasure Ben was sending across her body she felt nothing but the moment, singular, joyous, hungry. And cruel, a cold selfish cruelty because when he was no longer useful to her for pleasure he would satisfy the hunger building inside her, a hunger like she had never know.

A seismic shudder convulsed her body, erupting in a screaming wail that set the trees trembling. Ben continued his lingual embrace of her pussy, enjoying her release, wet from it, feeling her loss of control as the rapture engulfed her. She was tingling, every movement of his tongue, lips and teeth amplified in the post climactic glow. Ben nuzzled into her, drinking from the sacred well until the quivering tension in her thighs began to subside.

~~~

“That’s not much of a choice.” Replied Clarissa.

“You would be surprised how many of your kind choose not to conform. So many choose annihilation rather than comply. However, we must insist that you choose because without the Code our entire existence amongst the humans is in jeopardy.”

The younger man spoke. “Clarissa, without the code we could not continue to feed, to exist, to thrive.” His voice was soothing, kind, almost friendly, certainly beguiling. “You do understand that don’t you?”

“What I understand is that you are an effete, self-proclaimed oligarchy who seem content to see vampires live out their existence in secrecy. We could be so much more if it weren’t for the code. I could be so much more!”

The old man felt the need to defend The Code. “The code is there to protect us and the humans. For us it ensures our food source does not become restless and too wary. They on the other hand live in blissful ignorance of our existence, save for a few folk tales, and rather amusing books and films.”

Clarissa’s gaze dropped to the carpet, it’s nauseating design not helping to settle her stomach. She wanted to rebel, her new-found power telling her she could overwhelm the Others, force them to allow her to behave as she wanted. Set against this was a tiny seed of reason that reminded her of their age, their guile and their capricious nature.

~~~

Ben’s mouth parted from her lips. He looked up at Clarissa, her face still skyward and eyes shut in a post-orgasmic trance. He opened his mouth to speak, but felt a hand grip his shoulder and throw him backwards, landing against the trunk of a fallen ash.

“Leave us” ordered the dark figure. His eyes glowed, just for a moment, amber yellow, pupils reptilian. Ben scrambled to his feet and ran headlong back towards the house.

Clarissa, startled, opened her eyes, but as she returned to her sense did not need her eyes to see him. It was the one who had turned her, the one who had given her this new existence.

“We need to talk …”

~~~

Timothy was crouching in front of her now, he took her hands in his. “This is difficult for me, more so than the others, I turned you. We will always have a unique connection, you know that. So Clarissa, I’m asking you, please agree to abide by The Code.” He smiled at her as she raised her eyes to look into his. She smiled back weekly.

After a moment his face hardened the smile evaporated from his lips and he stood, looking down at her. “You have until tomorrow, midnight, to make your peace with us and agree to be bound by The Code.”