Dolly Biters

Chapter One: The Vampire Girls of Victorian London-3

I heard a key turn, unlocking the bed chamber door, and a tingling sensation buzzed across my mouth as my terrible fangs stretched and ached, yearning to reach out and violate human flesh. I turned to face the door as Miss Ainsworth entered. At the sight of me she took a step back, visibly shocked at the sight that befell her.

“Oh you poor, poor dear,” she gasped, raising a hand to her lips. “Come, let me help you pack,” she said, trying to regain her composure and focus on the task at hand. “I have some lady friends I can speak to. Perhaps we can find a place for you to stay.”

Though tears were welling in her eyes, still she attempted to smile at me, attempting to reassure me that all would be well. She did not realise that I was beginning to come to the conclusion that all was well enough as things stood. My hunger had found a focus. She smiled at me meekly, tears in her gentle eyes, and I smiled back at her like a snake with a rat's tail hanging out of its mouth.

Catching sight of myself in the mirror, I was struck by how much I now resembled my vampiric father, the infamous prince. I slid from the side of the dresser and quick as a flash made my way around the room towards the snivelling teacher. I tried to think of some words to say, perhaps an apology for what I was about to do, or a way of thanking her for her kindness, a way to perhaps even acknowledge her, our, unspoken affections, but at the sight of her neck and the smell of her sadness I could contain myself no longer, and I exploded upon her in a frenzy of hunger and passion.

My fangs clamped themselves around the back of her neck and my right hand reached around and clamped itself across her mouth, the better to stifle her screams. Under such exertions we tumbled to the carpeted floor, our legs and feet having become tangled in the teacher's voluminous dress, my breasts pushed up against her shoulder blades, her face pushed into the carpet, as I sucked her blood and waited for the natural sedative of my fangs to take hold and quell her vain struggling. It did not take long and soon she was subdued. I rolled her onto her back and slowly, luxuriously, drained her of her blood.

Her left foot, clad in a delicate pink heeled slipper, tapped rhythmically, involuntarily against one of my bed's wooden feet. Tap, tap, tap, in time with my sucking and the heaving of my chest. Tap, tap, tap. I tasted the summer walks in her blood, the books she had devoured, the laughter we had shared. It was all here, in her blood, and my mind exploded at the sweet taste of it. Her very life-force was here within her blood, and now it was within me, giving me life anew. I was reborn there in that bed chamber, writhing atop my dying tutor. Such a world this was for those few short minutes, a place of wondrous release and hellish passions. Tap, tap, tap, more gently now for death was upon her. I thrust my teeth deeper into her flesh and placed a hand upon her breasts, the better to know her fully, intimately, without sorrow or fear of judgement. We were joined at last as one, hunter and prey, with more intensity than any two lovers had ever known. And then, like the last bloom of summer, she was gone.

I sat up and leaned back on my heels. Miss Ainsworth was dead beneath me, and her blood still filled my mouth and my throat. I raised a hand to my lips and fought back the urge to vomit. I was sitting in a lake of blood; it covered me and it covered the corpse, it was soaking into the carpet, and it had splattered across my dresser and my bed. So much blood. I dragged myself to my feet, my stomach bloated from the feeding, and knew I had to escape the house. If they found me here with the butchered Miss Ainsworth they would try to kill me. The authorities would be involved and they would hunt me down and burn me at the stake, the prescribed sentence for turned vampires that kill humans.

I pulled off my red-stained night dress, wiping my hands and my face as best I could on the soft linen, and then I quickly pulled on a dress that I found hanging in a closet. With no maids to help me I struggled at first to fasten the corset, but to my delight I found that being a vampire meant I was stronger now, lither, more subtle, and so what could have been a tricky job was accomplished in a matter of moments and I took a last look around my chamber. Nothing here to hold me back now, I decided. I had been abandoned, I had no soul, I did not belong with the living. “Cunts,” I said of my family and the house and the doctor and the prince, relishing the way the word formed in my mouth and tumbled off my tongue. “Cunts.” I had found my new favourite word.

There was one last matter to attend to before I fled. I knelt back down beside the ravaged body of Miss Ainsworth, my b****y hand-print now drying upon her breasts, and I kissed her gently upon the forehead. Dull, lifeless eyes looked back up at me. The spark had gone from them, she loved me no more. “Au revoir, mon cheri,” I whispered to her, remembering the time she had told me of her desire to one day visit Paris, a desire that now could never be acted upon, and then I stood, turned my back on her, and climbed out of my chamber window; it felt like I was eloping, but my love lay dead upon my bedroom floor and so I was left to elope alone.

London by night. What a sight! What a spectacle! Unmatched by any of the many wonders of the Empire! London is a jewel, and at night she sparkles with a ferocity to bring joy to the dourest of souls. I skipped along the streets of Chelsea with a spring in my step, feeling suddenly liberated, free from the shackles of conformity, and, perhaps most of all, supremely powerful. I was a vampire! A vampire, by all the saints! The teacher's blood coursed through my veins, intoxicating me, and I laughed out loud as I cantered through Chelsea and Belgravia and up towards the very centre of civilisation itself, Buckingham Palace. I had no plan in mind, no ultimate destination; I was simply enjoying this sense of euphoria. The night was beautiful, and I wished only to wallow in her dark radiance. I felt no sense of regret or remorse following the evening's gory events; my mind was focused solely on the here and now. My transformation was complete.

As a mortal, I had been a girl of privilege. I had grown up never having to work or want for anything. My life had been delivered to me on a silver platter, and whatever I had desired, within reason, had been mine for the asking. So, perhaps, I approached my new found vampiric status in a similar fashion. This was my new gift, my new toy, and I expected all around me, the mortals, to be impressed by the new me, to be afraid, to shrink from me or fall under my t****l. Well, I was soon to discover that a teenage girl with fangs, elf ears, and a blood smeared face (the night-dress had not been particularly effective at cleaning the blood from my visage), walking up Buckingham Palace Road as bold as brass, was not a sight welcomed by London's human populace. I had forgotten, in my excitement of the metamorphosis, that I was not regarded as a divine monster of the night. Rather I was a turned vampire, a filthy trollop, the lowest of the low, the scourge of the East End.

I first noticed a group of six or eight young men following me. I turned to smile at them, expecting I suppose that they were walking behind me in admiration or trance-like devotion. But when I saw them, saw their faces, I saw the truth. They looked angry, determined, full of bravado. “Watch out, love!” shouted one of these young toughs to a woman ahead of me, a nanny, pushing a baby in a pram. “We've got a Dirty Biter here! Must've wandered out from Spitalfields and got lost!” The nanny saw me, and quickly pushed the pram away from my path. As I passed her, she spat on the ground where I walked. The group of young vigilantes now numbered a dozen, maybe more, and with each step more men, older now, joined the throng.

Dirty Biter. It was the first time I had heard the term, and now these men were calling it again. “Dirty Biter!” they cried, warning others walking along Buckingham Palace Road to beware. And then they began to shout directly at me. “Get back to Spitalfields, you filthy slapper!” “Aye, sod off! You don't belong here!”

They had been keeping their distance, allowing me to keep perhaps twenty feet ahead of them. But as their number increased, so did their courage and now they were but a step or two behind me. I was unsure of my powers at the time, of course. I could have, if I had put my mind to it, killed them all – how many now, two dozen? – but this was still so very new to me, and I had never had cause to fight anyone before in my life! I was from Chelsea, for heaven's sakes, and these ruffians were, I hesitate to admit, quite intimidating. Five minutes before I had thought myself the Queen of the Night, Mistress of the Damned, and yet now I was hastening my step, on the verge of being chased by a r****e of righteous men, and the exuberance I had felt was now rapidly being replaced by fear.

An old woman, tottering along the middle of the pavement, saw the commotion and stepped unsteadily aside to let our dark parade pass. At the sight of me she hissed, “Filth!” and then to the men following, “Kick her face in, boys!” I could stand it no longer. I lifted up the bustles of my black dress and took flight. I was fast, amazingly fast, and I dodged between the mortals walking along the pavement, running at such a pace that I must have seemed like something of a blur to them. The men who had been following me attempted, for a short distance, to keep pace with me, but they could not. I ran and I dodged and I weaved, and I left them trailing in my wake. My exuberance returned; they could not hurt me, they could not even touch me!

I sprinted the rest of the way along Buckingham Palace Road, past the palace itself though I hardly registered it in my haste, and into St. James's Park where I hid amongst the trees and the shrubbery, catching my breath (not that I was terribly out of breath really), and making sure I had not been followed by any of those mortal ruffians. I hadn't. I was safe.

From my secret vantage point, I looked out at the human world carrying on around me. Here in the park I could see sweethearts walking hand-in-hand, the occasional gaggle of old maids out for an evening stroll, nannies pushing prams, a well-dressed city gentleman hastening along, perhaps having worked late and now heading for home. Here a young gentleman peddling along on one of those bicycle contraptions, here a smart soldier enjoying a pipe. What time was it? Perhaps half past eight? Yes, that would make sense. It was still early enough on this October evening for mortals to be wandering the streets in what they would regard as safety. I watched them and they had no idea that I was there. At any moment I could have leapt from my hiding place and ripped the throat out of them. Luckily for them I was still sated from the blood of Miss Ainsworth, my tutor, and so I only watched them as they strolled along. I watched them and I despised them, these humans who had chased me from their streets, who had spat on the floor as I passed, and who had called me filth. I suddenly felt a very real hatred for their warm-bloodedness, for their rosy complexions and their plump little cheeks. They were pigs, I realised. Pigs who walked on two legs and dressed in fine clothes, but pigs none-the-less. Pigs whose only true purpose in life was to serve as my food. I could stand being amongst them no longer; I needed to find my way to those like me, to my kin, to the so-called Dolly Biters…