Dolly Biters

Chapter One: The Vampire Girls of Victorian London-4

How much did I know of these girl vampires, the pointy eared and sharp toothed trash of Spitalfields? Not much, I suppose. In the leafy avenues of Chelsea, such matters were not thought suitable subjects for discussion, except of course when one is entertaining at dinner parties and the wine is flowing.

I vaguely remembered one such dinner party, and oh how I wished I had paid more attention at the time! Again I think I must have appeared invisible to those sat around me, when business men, men of power, my father, were discussing these girls. I now struggled to recall what they had said. They had used words such as 'filthy' and 'vermin' when describing these turned vampires, they had said they lived in squalor, more animals now than the humans they had once been, preying on the unwary who wandered inadvertently into their lair, occasionally hunting farther afield, killing humans and drinking their blood and stealing their possessions. They were all females, most of them prostitutes who had been turned when natural-born vampires (the respectable vampires, the ones with the bloodlines and the ancestral homes and, perhaps most importantly, the money) had bitten them and infected them with vampire saliva during the throws of passion. Some of course had not been prostitutes. Some had just been unlucky enough to have crossed paths with a natural born of dubious morals. But all of them, all of these filthy East End Dolly Biters were shunned and detested by both human and natural-born society. Had it been a Prime Minister who had sat in our dining room and told my father that the situation was under control? That the female vermin had been contained in Spitalfields and that the government was working on a 'final solution' to the problem? Yes, I seemed to recall that it was.

Spitalfields. It was to Spitalfields that I must go. To go and find my sisters…

Having experienced how the humans reacted to a lone vampire in their midst, I took a moment to try and smarten my appearance. I pulled my hair over my ears, and in a near-by fountain, at an opportune moment, I quickly rinsed water over my face and teeth, washing away the b****y evidence of my earlier meal. I must still have looked a frightful state, but at least I looked marginally more human than before. I bowed my head, kept my mouth tightly shut, and hurried out of the park and down Horse Guards Road and towards the Embankment. I travelled along the Embankment and Thames Street, following the path of the great river, before, in the early hours of the morning, heading up Commercial Street into Whitechapel and hence to Spitalfields.

* * *

“f**k off, sister!” screeched one, and the laughter redoubled.

* * *

“You were lucky to find us,” said Raffles as we sat in that room on Chicksand Street. “A single vampire roaming the streets of London, well, it don't usually end so well. We have to stick together, watch each other's backs. I'm sorry if our welcome when you first arrived here was less than cordial. That weren't right of us. You're welcome here, Irene. I hope you knows that now.”

“Thank you,” I said and smiled, and around me all the other girls smiled too, a dozen or more pairs of fangs twinkling like shooting stars in the night.

Raffles put an arm around me and pulled me close. “Come here darling,” she whispered, “let us welcome you into our little coven properly.”

For the first few nights after my arrival on Chicksand Street, before the girls had properly accepted me, they had deigned to allow me to hunt with them. Each night we had set out into the dark streets of Spitalfields, and each night we had fed on the blood of mortals. But upon our return and during the daylight hours, I had slept alone, in a room by myself, very much an outsider in this tightly knit band of comrades. I had, during the daylight hours when blinds and drapes were pulled tight across windows to keep out the murderous rays of the sun, heard shuffling and giggles, the sound of people moving from room to room, and moans and wails also. I had not known what it all meant, but now, now I was about to discover the true intimacy of Raffles' coven.

Raffles put an arm around me and pulled me close. She began to kiss me on the neck, gentle little caresses that belied the awful power of her teeth and mouth. I heard the other girls breathing and was aware of them moving closer. I did not fight Raffles' attentions.

She stood me up and pulled my skirts up over my head, removing the dress from my body and finding me quite n***d beneath save for my stockings and boots. I had still been wearing the dress I had thrown on when I had vacated the family home, and having dressed in a hurry, under-garments had been sacrificed in favour of haste. Placing her hands around my neck and squeezing gently, she observed me with her face tilted to one side. Her lips were pulled back, like a snarling dog, and her fangs were elongated and dripping with saliva. Her eyes glowed a vibrant red, and around us were the eyes of the other girls, also glowing red. Their breathing sounded like panting, and their cold breath buffeted my n***d skin.

I began to panic. Raffles' hands still squeezed me around the neck and her grip was growing tighter. Did she mean to murder me? Was this all some cruel joke? I tried to speak but found I could not. And then, and then just as tears began to roll down my cheeks, she released me. I felt insane desires take a hold of my mind, a feeling the likes of which I had never experienced before, and I had an overwhelming need to experience Raffles' tongue, long and lizard-like, caress my body and my breasts and my legs and…

I took a step towards her instinctively, but she manoeuvred me expertly, like a Spanish matador in those travel journals that I had read in my study with Miss Ainsworth, teasing the bull, tormenting the poor beast, before putting it to the sword. She laid me down upon the bare floor, and almost as though she could read my mind and understood my desires, her lips and her tongue devoured me. She devoured all of me, my neck, my breasts, my stomach, and my womanhood, until I exploded with passion, writhing on the floor, tears rolling down my cheeks, and all the while the other girls around me stroked my hair, kissed my forehead, and sucked upon my fingertips. Raffles had me, they all had me, and I was now a part of their coven. I had been blooded, and lay upon the floor with my hips still gently rocking as the girls and Raffles began to lick and tongue each other. It was an orgy and it lasted all night and into the following day.

Had I been a virgin before this encounter? Well, yes, of course. And, technically perhaps, I was still a virgin. I may not have been penetrated, but I had been devoured. Oh yes, I had been devoured. “Does it like the tongue?” Raffles had asked me in the throes of passion. “Oh yes,” I had replied, “it does.” She had called me it, and to be objectified in such a cruel manner had excited me more than I would have imagined possible. Poor, sweet, innocent Irene Adler was dead. In her place was the Vampire Irene Adler of Spitalfields, Dirty Biter, Brick Lane Irregular and, it would seem, Lesbian Trollop.

The next day, after the passions had subsided but while we were still forced to take refuge indoors from the sun, Raffles sat beside me on a battered old settee. “You'll be safe with us,” she said. “Ain't nothing can hurt you while you're with us. No-one crosses the Spitalfields' vampires.” But the way she spoke sounded more like, “Yewel be save wiff us. Ain't nuffink can hurtcha while you wiv us,” and I smiled inwardly that this hard faced girl, this rough arse from the East End, was now my saviour and protector, me who had dined with Prime Ministers and European royalty! But at that moment, and now, more so now than ever, I would not swap Raffles, or any of the girls, not for all the royalty and lords and ladies in all the Empire, in all the world.

“You'll be safe with us,” she had said. “No-one crosses the Spitalfields' vampires.” Perhaps it was at that moment, that delicate instant, that Raffles inadvertently cursed us and brought the minions of hell down upon our coven. But that adventure was still yet to come…

So, over the next few weeks, my life attained some degree of normality, although it was a normality that would disgust and terrify the mortals. We hunted humans most every night, and during the daylight hours we rested, we hid from the sun, and we explored the most carnal of desires, swapping partners most days, and even swapping partners in the course of single days. I felt no guilt at engaging in such base appetites, rather I embraced these appetites, I enjoyed them, I craved them. I was liberated.