Melissa MacNeal - Beyond Redemption

Perfidia bucked against my face, and with a strangled cry she wrenched herself away from me. She sprang toward Billy, who was writhing on the wall with an erection resembling a tall, purple-headed mushroom. Impaling herself on his cock, the vampire let out a wild cry and rode him like the raging bull he was, rocking hard against his body as her head lolled back. Like dogs, Justin and Jeremy scuttled over to catch the drippings-likely to be a feast, as the wetness squelched with each thrust of the lovers.

I watched in dawning horror, wiping the wetness from my face. Perfidia's blood-colored gown shifted and shook, veiling the lower parts of their bodies as they shuddered into the first stage of climax. But nothing could mask the fangs that sprang between her lips. That bitch was going to sate her lust on my Billy and then suck his blood!

When I sprang at her, I was repelled by an invisible wall. I triedagain, scrambling toward the rutting pair to deliver Billy from his doom. But once more I struck the barrier she'd erected from air, and her satanic magic sent that damn cage flying over in pieces to reconstruct itself around me. I cringed as those white incisors flashed, for once Tripplehorn grunted with his first spurt, he'd be lost in a climax that might cost him his life.

Perfidia went for his neck.

Billy, caught up in convulsions and those invisible manacles, cried out. For what seemed like forever, the parasite riding him clung to his jugular. I could only mewl like an abandoned cat, clutching the cold bars of my cage as my pulse raced along with my catastrophic thoughts.

Billy's eyes closed, and then his body stopped bucking. With a languorous sigh he slumped, and his head lolled to one side as Perfidia finally let him go. God, but he looked pale hanging there. As lifeless as Lucy Legg on the undertaker's table.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. Why had Perfidia killed him? I thought the Three P's had decided to let him stay here because he'd make them an exciting new playmate, but this bitch had taken matters into her own hands without her partners' consent. She climbed down and allowed the twins to lick her slit clean. After dismissing them with a flick of her hand, the vampire smoothed her gown into place as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

My knuckles grew white as I gripped the bars of my little prison. "You goddamn, whoring-"

"That's no way to talk to your mother, Alexandrea."

"-thief! Stealing the man you knew-you knew…you…" I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes, not believing what I'd just heard. Perfidia was too caught up in her deception to be playing straight with me. Just trying to drive the final nail into my proverbial coffin by insinuating we two could be related in any way.

I shuddered-my body's reaction to a situation my mind didn't yet grasp. "You just can't stand it that Billy loves me, despite learning I live in this hell hole with you three-"

"Loves you, does he? We'll see about that."

With a snap of her fingers, she brought him around. My poor heart stood still as Billy's eyes opened, and then he abruptly inhaled. He still looked limp as a rag doll, but he was focusing-taking in the room and the two of us. Recognition reached his pale face.

"Billy, my sweet," Perfidia crooned, reaching over to chuck him under the chin. "Did you enjoy that fucking?"

"God yes, it was-"

"Better than the way Alexandrea gives it to you?"

When his wary glance came my way, I saw those brown eyes swirling like stirred coffee in a cup. The vampire still held him in her thrall, yet Tripplehorn's words cut me deep.

"Why, of course it was. How could any woman possibly compare to you, Perfidia?" he murmured dreamily.

The bitch smiled, sipping her cigarette. "Perhaps we can give her lessons, you and I. Would it give you a thrill, servicing mother and daughter at the same time, dear boy?"

There it was again, that insinuation I couldn't allow to stand unchallenged. "Don't believe a thing she's saying, Billy! She's up to her old tricks again, deceiving us both!" I declared loudly.

Yet my voice wavered. Something deep inside me was piecing together odd bits of recollection-glimpses of a past I didn't recall but somehow knew to be true.

Perfidia watched, reading the rush of my thoughts. I clenched the iron bars of a cage that had shrunk each time I'd spoken out against her, denying there could be any connection between myself and this vampire I'd never liked or trusted. It seemed, at that awful moment, that my only defense was a blatant offense.

"Well, if you were my mother-which I seriously doubt, considering your immortal damnation as a vampire-then who was my father? I demanded. "Whoever he was, you must've caught him up in your thrall to get him to-"

"No, Judge Legg's always been a randy sort. Ruts anything that's warm and wet," she replied with a shrug. "Which is how Miss Lucy got knocked up. Which was why she had to die."

Once again my mind did a stutter-step at all this impossible information. It was outrageous of this vampire to say she'd birthed me, but to assert that the magistrate was my father! Why, that old goat- My heart shriveled. When I'd seen Lucy pinned to the wall of St. Mary's, urging Billy Tripplehorn to climax inside her, I'd suspected she was trapping him with an inconvenient pregnancy-and I'd guessed Harold Legg had something to do with her death. That the judge had perhaps-perhaps-gotten her with child matched my darkest opinions of him, even though such an abomination was a crime I didn't wish to think about.

But to believe the magistrate had sired me…with this insidious bitch of porcelain skin and platinum hair…well, it was more than I could stomach. I vomited, while my mind reeled with the most sickening information I'd received since my early childhood. All my life I'd believed I was an orphan-born to a destitute mother, or a woman caught in the crossfire of misbegotten passions, whose lover wanted nothing to do with me. And while that story was sad and difficult to accept, it sounded a hell of a lot better than what was being passed offas the truth right now.

I glared at Perfidia, determined not to cave in. "You're hundreds of years old, and you're a vampire-undead! So how could you have conceived me?" I challenged.

The ghoul chuckled, clearly enjoying the shock she'd caused. "A faulty assumption on your part, my dear. Young as she may appear, it was Pink who created me-took my life as I knew it, while Harold and I were newlyweds. She said it was the scent of conception that drove her beyond control. She knew you were in there, if just barely, and that with a constant supply of blood my body would support you until you were born. So the evening after my funeral, she dug me up and brought me around with a massive infusion of her own youthful fluid, until I learned to feed on Pandora's orphans. Ironic, isn't it, that a bitch in heat like me can be a babe in the woods, as vampires go."

She laughed at her own joke. In that airless room where I was being bombarded with too much truth, it sounded like the manic cackle of a witch. "Not that I believe any of this," I said in a thin voice, "but why would Miss Pink do such a thing? She always makes things happen to her own advantage, so-"

"Because she CAN!" came Perfidia's raucous reply. Then she eyed me slyly, taking another draw from that infernal cigarette. Didn't that thing ever go out?

"And because she'd vowed to wreak havoc on the magistrate," the vampire added with a satisfied smile. "Seems he convicted her mother of whoring-which was her sole means of supporting her children-so Pink figured the loss of his own wife and unborn child as partial payment for the death of her mama."

"Revenge."

"Precisely. And nobody wreaks revenge like a pretty young thing with fangs."

"Is that why you attacked Billy? Because I 'owe' you for all the years you let me live, and for allowing me to pursue-" I stopped rather than reveal my profession, even though Tripplehorn was still in a stupor. "NOT that I believe you're my mother, of course."