I woke up with a start to the sound of gunfire, my heart beating right out of my chest. Mistress. She was gone, at least as far as I could tell. Maybe just downstairs—She liked to go down to the lobby and the beach during the night sometimes. But with the threat of hunter_419 on the horizon and that gunshot sounding, it was impossible not to worry.

I had been sleeping so soundly with Hannah next to me. She and I weren’t dating or anything, but my fellow thralls were always a comforting presence, and she was so fucking cute. She was a good friend and sexual partner to have around. I had understood immediately upon meeting her why my Mistress had decided to take her in. I was also grateful for her letting me share her bed and stay over for the night… she was good for cuddling.

Right now, though, she was awake next to me in a cold sweat, looking more disoriented than I was. It made sense—Mistress had drunken her blood earlier tonight. That took a lot out of you, literally. And beyond that, I was a bit better at handling a sensitive situation like this than she was. I was skilled at being goal-oriented and keeping myself together, I supposed. Actively protective, as well. That and my regrettable vampire hunter experience was what Mistress relied on me for. Of course, She also relied on my blood and my unconditional submission to Her will, which made it all the sweeter.

“W-was that a gunshot?” Hannah said, her voice and body both trembling, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“I think so,” I said, trying to stay calm and act like the voice of reason, even though I didn’t really feel up to it in my heart of hearts. It was Mistress’ undeath potentially on the line, though, so I didn’t think twice. “I’m gonna go downstairs and see how Mistress is doing.”

“Alright. Hope it goes well,” she said. “I’ll get my clothes on in case you need me. Text me, OK?”

I nodded to her as I put my own clothes back on. According to the clock radio, the time was 12:36 AM. We hadn’t been asleep for long… which also meant that Mistress couldn’t have gone too far, at least not willfully. No late-night drives out into the woods for Her, as She sometimes liked to do. I also hadn’t received any message from Her about what may have happened down there… these things made me worry.

I waved to Hannah and left her room. There was no time to wait for the elevator on the fifth floor. I’d need to take the stairs instead, like Mistress usually preferred to in order to avoid public attention. I rushed downstairs, not as fast as Mistress could, of course, but I was a pretty athletic woman. I liked to keep my body strong both for Mistress’ protection and for my own personal satisfaction.

I found the lobby empty, absent of even Gail who usually worked the night shift on Thursday nights such as tonight. She had probably gone outside to investigate whatever the hell had happened. Well, there were no signs of a struggle in here, at least… and no signs of Mistress anywhere nearby, either. I wished at that moment that I had Mistress’ tracking abilities, able to identify humans from a long distance away just by the scent of our blood… of course, I supposed that even Mistress couldn’t track Herself.

Stepping out back, I saw the silhouette of a woman on the beach… at first, I thought it was Mistress Herself, as it might be on a normal night… more than once, Hannah, my girlfriend Lauren and I had peered out the window of a hotel room together to watch our beloved Goddess take a walk on the beach. Other times, I had been out there myself, holding Her hand and walking where She wanted to take me, completely captivated by Her beauty and allure.

But no, it was Gail, walking along the beach with a bit of difficulty in her high heels. She was a shorter lady with curly strawberry blonde hair and glasses, not nearly as tall as my red-haired Mistress, but they had somewhat similar frames… she spotted me and waved me down, looking especially stressed out. Seeing that stressed me out immediately, without Mistress in sight, as I ran over to her.

“Do you know what happened?” I shouted, my words nearly drowned out by the roar of the ocean waves. From the look on her face I could already tell that I wasn’t going to like the answer.

Gail nodded sadly, sealing the deal. “No sign of Her… not Her body, anyway. Come and have a look at this.”

I walked over to where she was standing, by the water’s edge, and immediately saw what she was talking about. The sand was imprinted in a large rough circle, and leading away from it was a short trail that soon gave way to footprints, just barely visible after the breeze had run over them.

“You, uh… you think this was Mistress’ body?” I asked, looking at Gail with concern.

“Probably,” she said, looking down. “I just found this, right before you came out here. Seems like the only lead we have.”

“Well, yeah… did Mistress tell you about the threat against Her?” I said, walking at a brisk pace along the footprints that I could only assume was left by whoever had taken my Mistress. Considering the trail of footprints wasn’t accompanied by the trail of Mistress’ body past the first couple of feet, the kidnapper must have been pretty strong, though Mistress’ bloodless body was a little lighter than a human’s. Gail soon followed behind.

“Uh… not in much detail. Hannah sent me a photo of the hunter,” Gail said. “She must be responsible for this, right?”

“I’d think so. hunter_419 is serious… I’ve seen her write on the vampire hunters’ Clamor server for years. She’s more competent than I was, that’s for sure.” We were coming up on the edge of the beach now, to a walking trail that led up to a nearby parking lot, overlooking the beach but separate from the one for the hotel. The tracks were still visible in the gravelly dirt of the trail, but they cut off where it reached the asphalt of the parking lot, unsurprisingly.

“So you think we have cause to be worried, then?” Gail looked pretty terrified, a feeling I shared as I gulped down. Now was not the time to be panicking. I needed to stay strong for Mistress, hope that she was still out there somewhere. Otherwise… otherwise I wouldn’t have a Mistress any more. What would that even mean for me? I couldn’t think about it now.

“Yes,” I said plainly. No way around it. “Very fucking worried. But look, those footprints also branch over to that hill up there. Let’s take a look.”

As we walked, I took out my phone and texted Hannah.

<Valerie Hawthorne> We found signs that Mistress might have been dragged off into a car.

Pay close attention to the Clamor server and see if hunter_419 posts any updates.

I’m terrified of losing Her.

<Hannah Burke> Will do… 💙

Oh Goddess, my Mistress was going to die. Was dead? Fuck. It was… it was truly possible, though. She was immortal… it wasn’t supposed to end like this. A thrall outliving her Mistress… what could be more tragic than that? I had been burdened with free will for 28 whole years before She took it from me… I had known for six months now how much better off I was without it. In some ways, I’d always be bound to Her will even if She was gone, but how could I go on without Her gentle embrace, Her alluring voice, the sting of Her fangs in my neck?

I fell to my knees in despair as Gail and I reached the top of the hill, a relatively high perch that overlooked the beach to its south. It was overgrown with grass, not often tread by people, clearly, but the footsteps led here, and now… now my knee was in contact with something metallic.

A bullet casing, left on the ground. Flecks of silver were just about visible on its interior as I picked it up. These things weren’t cheap, I knew from experience. People sold them on online marketplaces for upwards of 200 dollars a bullet, targeted at those who would challenge creatures of the night.

I frowned as I saw it, knowing this was evidence of something horrible, but also at the same time sort of relieving… a bullet shot from this distance would have been unlikely to hit Mistress’ heart and kill Her instantly, even if the shooter was pretty experienced. It was quite difficult to ascertain internal biology that accurately, especially for some amateur vampire hunter. Maybe this was no amateur, but I’d still be surprised if she could make a shot like that with any reliability. I wanted to believe, anyway. Most anywhere other than Her heart and Mistress would recover, even if it took time.

If you asked me, leaving the casing here seemed a bit suspiciously sloppy, to be frank. Not what I would’ve expected from hunter_419.

I held the bullet up where Gail could see it. She was still lagging a bit behind me, dressed in a skirt suit and pantyhose for her job at the hotel’s front desk. She was a real trooper right now, doing right by Mistress even in this condition.

“This is what she used to shoot Her, I think,” I said. “Looks like a casing for a silver bullet.”

She put her hands up to her mouth in horror. “Oh, Goddess…”

I took a deep breath. “We need to hold out hope. If she was trying to kill Her with any accuracy, the hunter would’ve tried to stab Her, close-up. Seems more like she was trying to incapacitate Her, maybe… I’d like to believe that.”

“Um… why?” Gail asked, looking down at the bullet with deep concern. “Why would they do that… if they wanted to hurt our Goddess? Kill Her, even?”

“Well… um, from my experience, it’s not what I would’ve done,” I said. “Attacking a vampire is really dangerous. I always wanted to be done with it as soon as possible. Stab them, and get it over with. But hunter_419… she’s a lot more experienced than I was. More experienced than any hunter I’ve ever caught wind of, actually. I don’t know what she’s capable of, but she comes away with information… I always assumed it was just research, but maybe she’s really interrogating the vampires she hunts personally? Shit…”

“Mistress would take her if she tried that,” Gail said with religious zeal. “She’d be Hers in minutes. No prison could trap Her.”

“I’d like to believe that too,” I said, sweating. “I really would. But even a Goddess like her could be trapped and kept at bay, in the right circumstances, I’m afraid.”

Gail looked unmoved. She had such unwavering faith in our Goddess… I suppose the only reason I didn’t feel quite so confident was because I had come so close to killing Her myself… that made me feel ashamed. In a sense, I was responsible for this whole thing… I gave hunter_419 all the information she had needed to apparently do this to my Mistress, my world, my love, my Goddess, whom I lived for and whom I would die for if it was ever required. But now, Her undeath was potentially on the line… and that made it my responsibility, more than anyone else’s, to do whatever I could to save Her from that horrible fate.

“Look… for the time being, I think this is all we’re going to find. We need to get back to the hotel and regroup. I need to try and figure out where this hunter might have taken our Mistress,” I said.

“Alright,” Gail agreed, nodding sadly. Feeling powerless in Mistress’ arms was wonderful, but feeling powerless here… it reminded me of how awful feeling powerless had used to feel, back when my free will was something I still valued. Powerless to find Her, maybe. Powerless to save Her. I refused to believe that I wouldn’t find a way to do something. She had given me so much… now it was time for me to return the favor.

We made it back inside the hotel in short order, where I took a seat on one of the lobby’s couches and typed out a message to my Mistress’ group chat, containing Her and all of Her thralls. Really, I probably should have written there to begin with — just to see if I could reach my Mistress, but I had been in such a panic that I felt I had just needed to see what was happening first of all. Goddess, I felt exhausted. But there was no time for rest until I had some idea of what had happened to Her.

<Valerie Hawthorne> There’s a critical situation. A gunshot was heard outside the hotel while Mistress was walking on the beach about twenty minutes ago, and She has subsequently gone missing.

Evidence suggests that She may have been shot by a silver bullet and driven away in a car by her assailant.

This is likely related to recently-discovered threats made against Her by hunter_419, a member of the New England vampire hunter community.

We must stand together and hope that our Goddess is keeping Herself safe.

Mistress: if You are reading this, please respond.

Others: if She does not respond, ideas are encouraged.

<Lauren Keller> Wtf! i didnt realize it was this bad! oh Goddess i hope Shes ok

<Sandra Lee> FUCK that’s awful, i wish i had been on shift to do something maybe… please save Her valerie

<Hannah Burke> :(

<Gail O’Connor> I can confirm, I was there too. The hunter will NOT have the better of our Goddess. Have faith everyone

As my fellow thralls sent in their deluge of responses, none offering any solutions that I hadn’t already thought of, I realized with pain that there was one person that I probably ought to reach out to… someone who really didn’t deserve to get dragged into this, certainly in my view and I believed in my Mistress’ as well. She had gone off to live her own life, far from vampires, after a meeting with my Mistress that had turned surprisingly traumatic for her. It was hard to imagine, even back then when I had only been enthralled less than two days prior, that she wouldn’t fall head over heels for a woman like my beautiful, alluring Mistress, but stranger things had happened, I supposed…

In any case, I had no desire to do anything but leave Emily alone, but the current situation left me no choice. I knew that she was on the Clamor server because I had personally gotten her to join, when I was helping her recover from her enthrallment, an enthrallment that unlike my own had been a life-threatening experience for her. And she had met my Mistress in person, knew all the details of Her background as She had told Lauren and I the story while Emily listened silently from the living room… if there was anyone who would have the capacity to involve herself with hunter_419’s crusade against my Mistress, it would have to be her.

<Valerie Hawthorne> Hey Emily. Hope you’re doing well. I know we haven’t talked in a while but I was wondering if you’ve spoken to anyone on the New England Vampire Hunters Clamor server lately… Naomi Rennt, my Mistress, went missing tonight and I’m worried that someone there might be behind it… can we get back in touch about this? Thanks.

Honestly, I had my doubts that she would respond. Emily and I hadn’t spoken since that night, the night that she rejected my Mistress just before Lauren submitted her body and soul to Her. I had used to be a good friend to her, someone she looked up to when I hunted vampires and agreed that it would be bad to be enthralled as a general rule. But those days were long behind me, and Emily had clearly moved on. She had her own support network outside of me, and that was good for her. I wasn’t in a part of my life where I could help her in the way she needed any more… I had matured out of that, I supposed.

With no responses, at least not immediately, I packed it up and returned to Hannah’s room, wishing Gail as good a night as any of us could have under present conditions. Hannah and I decided to reverse image search the one image we had of hunter_419, from her introduction on the server, to hopefully find out something more about her, but it didn’t turn up any useful results.

Tomorrow I’d have to do more digging into her, but that could take hours… better to do it with a clear head after getting some sleep. I would cancel work in the morning; this obviously took precedence. I just hoped that my Mistress could hold out long enough, wherever She was…

Not that I actually managed to get any good sleep during the night, even snuggling up with Hannah… all I could think of was whether She was safe. I sure as hell knew Her well enough to know that She would fight back. A strong vampire Goddess like Her could never be cowed into submission… it was the most I could hold on to for now. If hunter_419 wanted to take Her against Her indomitable will, she’d be in for a hell of a fight.

I woke up with a throbbing headache and the overwhelming sensation of Hannah’s hair brushing against a bite mark on my left tit given by my Mistress earlier in the week. It was horribly, wonderfully sensitive, and I couldn’t help but let out a moan that woke Hannah up right beside me. It was 8:12 AM according to the clock radio… really, I had gotten more sleep than I had bargained for. And checking my phone, there was still no response from Emily… that concerned me, but it was still pretty early in the morning. There was still time. For now, there was business to be done.

“Hey, Hannah,” I grumbled.

“Ugh… morning,” she replied, brushing her long brown hair out of her face.

“We should get something to eat, then see what more we can find out about hunter_419,” I said. I usually liked to take my mornings slow, but every moment would count while looking out for our Mistress… I felt bad for sleeping as long as I had. I wasn’t doing my due diligence; who knew what kind of torment She was dealing with right then as I spoke to Hannah. Rest and routine had to wait. It was just so hard to find any leads…

“Yeah, alright,” she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and sitting up. I got myself out of bed and put my tank top, hoodie, and jeans back on, then I went over to the kitchen area and opened her refrigerator.

“You have any eggs?” I asked. “I’ll scramble a couple for both of us.”

“They’re in the door,” Hannah said, struggling to pull herself out of bed. “I had a dream about Mistress last night. About Her hypnotizing me and making me pray to Her as She drank right out of my thigh for the entire night… I have dreams like that a lot. Goddess, I miss Her.”

“I have dreams like that too,” I said. “Sometimes She’ll strip me naked and pull me around on a leash in public in my dreams… I’m put on display as Her thrall and plaything, for the whole world to see.” I shuddered in excitement.

“We need to get Her back,” Hannah said.

“I agree.”

I tended to the eggs in silence for a few minutes while Hannah got her clothes on and subsequently sat on the bed, almost alternating between dreamy sighs and sad ones, as she no doubt reminded herself that our Mistress may have been in great danger. I just wished that I could know for sure if She was OK, if She was still undead, even. It horrified me that everything my Goddess had done could potentially be torn away without warning.

“Feels like nobody has any ideas on where to start,” Hannah said as we sat down to eat. “No more replies to your text from last night.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, taking a bite of scrambled egg, “there aren’t a lot of ideas to have other than finding out all we can about hunter_419. Then, maybe, we can figure out where she lives, track her down, and get our Mistress back. It’s all I can think to do.”

“Oh gosh,” Hannah said, looking down. “Hadn’t even considered the idea that this would involve breaking into someone’s house or something.”

“Nobody has to get hurt,” I said, frowning. “If they’ve got Mistress locked up somehow, all I would have to do is let Her out. I’ve done worse… before I was Hers.”

“Guess so.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose and slammed my fork into the table. “And if it comes down to it… I’ll hurt this woman if it means saving my Mistress.”

Right then, it didn’t feel so great to say. It was just true.

Hannah and I proceeded to look through hunter_419’s entire message history on the Clamor server. It was slow going and a bit upsetting, going through a little under a dozen pictures of vampiric corpses. Her most recent kill caught my eye—the body of a vampire named Helena Cherisi whom she had spent months tracking down in Italy. Apparently she had been a centuries-old aristocratic type who lived in an actual literal castle handed down to her through noble descent. Sounded kind of fucked up, though I had to wonder if she had maybe just been misunderstood in a similar way to my Mistress. Not that I was totally cool with the idea of actual nobility… but how did her thralls feel? Did they love her as much as I loved mine?

It had always been jarring to see… Ms. Cherisi was basically a human corpse now, just with fangs and a prematurely deathly pallor about her. That was just about the only way you could tell the difference once a vampire had been killed. No longer undead, so she could appear in photos again… She was wearing a floor length red dress that was probably hundreds of years old itself, and long black gloves… definitely gave off the air of some European noblewoman left over from the Renaissance. And stabbed right through her heart was a wooden stake, of course, leaving a gaping, bloodless wound.

The hunter community always loved to objectify vampires, but hunter_419 seemed to like it in particular. She spoke about them like animals, refusing to even use gendered pronouns and talking in-depth about their behavior like she was writing a scientific study. I had little doubt that she would speak about my Mistress in the same way… maybe she was doing so now. That was blasphemy that I couldn’t abide, and yet I couldn’t say that I hadn’t thought about Her kind that way in the past, even Herself, before She had taken me. It was just one of the many shames I carried from that dark time in my life.

That kind of objectification was necessary to psych yourself up to hunt vampires. I had done it myself because it made it easier to prepare myself to stab a human-looking creature in the heart and watch them die in front of me. If they were just parasites, predators, with no real internal sense of self, I could write it off as something less than murder. But I had seen my Mistress. I knew Her, as much as any weak mortal human like myself ever could. She was obviously, manifestly a person—misgendering Her was no less insulting and awful than misgendering Hannah or Lauren, all three of them trans girls who had decided to live as women loudly and proudly. Except in the case of my Mistress, you’d also be insulting a Goddess…

The whole thing was depressing and frustrating. Leads were thin, even though we spent hours searching through these messages. hunter_419 had been on this server for a very long time and seemed to be incredibly careful to avoid revealing anything about herself. From a purely pragmatic perspective, it made sense. I would’ve wanted this too in her position, if the thrall of a powerful vampire had been looking into me for her Mistress.

The best thing we were able to find was that there was another user who she communicated with a whole lot on the server named ch. I had never taken much from ch when I used to read the server, because they didn’t post much, but it turned out that they were leaving reactions on a lot of hunter_419’s key posts about her successful kills and similar things (Goddess, that was grisly) and were getting involved in a lot of conversations with her on the server. Hannah and I wondered if there was some kind of personal connection there, maybe.

Still, this was thin at best. It could be followed up on, but I was getting pretty jittery. I needed to stand up, needed to feel like I was actually doing something proactive to help Her. It had been in the back of my mind since I had sent the message last night, that if Emily didn’t respond, I was going to have to be more proactive… a prospect that didn’t exactly excite me, but again, it’d have to happen.

“I need to go see Emily,” I said after a protracted moment of silence, letting out a long breath. Hannah and I were sitting on the couch and armchair in her room, respectively, looking at the server on her laptop screen.

“Yeah?” Hannah said, looking over me and seeming a little concerned. “Are you sure that that’s a good idea? I mean, I never knew her, but… how would she help?”

“I texted her last night,” I said. “She hasn’t responded. Worried she’s avoiding me. And, uh… she’s on the server, thanks to me. She doesn’t post much, but I know she kept up with it back when we were friends, almost obsessively, really. And she knows a lot about Mistress. She said her a lot about Herself at my apartment that night… I mean, She was mainly speaking to Lauren, but Emily heard it all too. She could be involved in this. She could help hurt Mistress. It’s a risk we can’t afford, to leave her out of this.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Hannah said. “So you, uh, you think she knows something about hunter_419?”

“I think it’s a possibility, at least,” I said. “Thing is, they wouldn’t have even needed her. I already gave them everything they would’ve needed to fuckin’, shoot Mistress…” I slumped down onto the throw pillow next to me, crying into it. I hated this, hated it. I just wanted Her to be back. I didn’t want there to be even a small chance that I could ever be responsible for bringing harm to Her, but it was absolutely undeniable. She was such a forgiving Goddess, treating me so nicely in spite of my evil deeds, allowing me to kneel at Her feet and do Her bidding as I so loved and desired to do. I loved Her so much. I couldn’t lose Her. I wouldn’t.

“Oh Goddess, hey, it’s gonna be OK,” Hannah said, coming over to the couch and wrapping her arms around my waist. “At least I hope so. And look, blaming yourself isn’t gonna get Her back, right? It’s probably not what She would want, knowing Her. She’s a sweet and gentle Goddess. I mean just last night, I came back from my date with Celia with garlic breath and made Her choke and gag, and She didn’t hold it against me… I think She’d probably treat you the same? Especially since you did all that before you were Hers.”

I looked back up at Hannah, my face red with tears, and leaned hard into a hug with her. “Thank you. Ahh, I love our Mistress… She’s so wonderful.”

“She is.” Hannah beamed. “Beautiful and commanding and strong and gentle…”

We both sighed dreamily. But there wasn’t any time to dwell on Her perfection now.

“I’d better get moving, though. Don’t want to let Her down now,” I said, pulling away and standing up to get my shoes on, though not before giving Hannah a little kiss on the cheek. Our Mistress thought it was cute when we showed each other affection like that, so I made sure to do it a lot.

“You want me to come?” Hannah asked, moving to stand herself.

“I think it’d be better if I go alone. Emily and I are friends… or used to be anyway. I don’t want her feeling intimidated or ganged up on. I’m not gonna hurt her, I just need answers.” I just prayed to my Goddess that I wouldn’t need to hurt her.

“Makes sense,” she replied. “Good luck. Hope you can find our Mistress.”

“Me too.” I wasn’t feeling all too confident then, though.

Emily didn’t live too far out from the hotel—she was closer than Lauren and I, actually, in a small brick apartment building in a town called Amesbury. I realized on the way over that I wasn’t completely certain she lived here any more. It was all too possible that she’d moved across the country… but then again, she’d built up quite the support network in the area, so it seemed unlikely. Of course, she could’ve just moved a few doors down, instead. I just had to hope that that wouldn’t be the case when I started knocking on her door, desperate for an answer, something.

Pressing my ear up against the door, I heard sounds of shuffling. Even if that wasn’t her, just a new resident or something, I could maybe get some kind of info from them… or maybe from one of her former neighbors? I just wanted to keep hoping it was her for now…

“Hey, uh, it’s Valerie!” I shouted at the door. “Just wanted to come over here and follow up on that text I sent you last night! It’s pretty urgent!”

I waited for what felt like hours for a response, but was really more like 30 seconds. This kind of uncertainty could be so devastating when it was someone I cared for so deeply on the line. This was so necessary. I needed something!

The door opened a crack, giving me a glimpse of Emily’s face. She was a skinny girl with curly black hair, wearing a white t-shirt and blue flannel. She was looking a lot better than I had ever really seen her. It seemed like she had been recovering from her enthrallment pretty well… I was really happy to see that. What she had gone through had been just awful.

And yet she sounded horribly strained as she spoke to me, as bad as she had sounded the day I’d killed her former Goddess. “Valerie… please, please go away. I really don’t have anything more to say about Naomi… just leave me out of this, alright?”

I… I wished I could. I hated seeing her like this. I didn’t really want to be here. But it seemed like the only way, the only thing I could do that might get me a really solid lead.

“Please… I need to talk to you, Emily,” I said. “I’ll never bother you again if you don’t want me to, just please hear me out this once.”

Her expression turned from stress to sympathy as she pulled the door open a little further, letting me see the interior of her apartment. It looked better than the last time I had been here… the bloodstains on the carpet, dripped out of her neck as her Goddess had drunk from her carelessly (so unlike my own), had finally been washed out, and she had gotten herself a small shoe rack next to the front door. It looked like she was living well, and that was encouraging to see.

“Oh god, you look like shit,” she said. I probably did; I hadn’t given myself the time to clean myself up after crying earlier, and I was on the verge of crying again now. I certainly hadn’t taken a shower, done makeup, or anything like that, either. “Come on in, I guess.” She sounded utterly defeated. I really didn’t like making her feel like this, but I walked in, took my sneakers off, and threw myself onto her couch, feeling like absolute shit. What was I even doing…

“Look,” Emily said. Well, I did my best, feeling as terrible as I did. Time spent with my Mistress had made me kind of instinctually suggestible, I guessed. “Let me be perfectly honest with you here. You betrayed me and Lauren—call it what you want—but you betrayed us when you called in Naomi to your own apartment last year. You put me in a seriously traumatizing situation… and shit, in the end, you put Lauren in an even worse one.”

“I was—” I tried to speak up. No, no, she didn’t get it, I didn’t want to hurt her like this, it was just what I had to do. I was straight-up sobbing then.

“I know,” she said, cutting me off and putting her hand on her forehead as though pained. “You were doing it for Naomi, right? Trust me, I know. That’s why I’m letting you in now. No matter how bad it feels for me, I have to keep in mind that it wasn’t really your fault… just like you told me after you, uh, you killed Kathy.” Her former Goddess. I knew what she was referring to. She had helped her Goddess pick out people to drink the blood of during the brief time she was enthralled, helping her find people at public parks and restaurants who ended up being drained of their blood and killed. It was one of the things that had stuck with her the most after I had saved her, bringing an impenetrable sense of guilt with it. My Mistress was nothing like this, though. She was always sweet to me, and…

“It’s not the same. She’s not,” I said. “My Mistress is different.”

Emily let out a long sigh, crossing her arms across her chest. “Yeah, I doubt I’m gonna convince you too easily. The thing is, I had you to lean on after Kathy was gone. You were my friend for those three months, someone I could really trust. Now Naomi’s gone—”

“She is not gone!” I insisted. “I will save Her!”

Emily breathed all the way in through her nose before continuing, while pacing around the small studio apartment. “What I’m trying to say is, you weren’t responsible for that. It’s just a fucked situation. I ought to return the favor you gave me, before we even knew each other. I’m not equipped for it in the same way you were, but it’s what you deserve. A shoulder to lean on in your time of need, when it feels like the entire world is crumbling around you because the woman who enslaved your will might be dead.”

She muttered under her breath, “God, at least I got to be sure she was gone.”

“No, no, this isn’t the same!” I said. I could barely wrap my head around what she was saying. Then and now, Emily insisted that her former Goddess and my Mistress were comparable, failing to understand what made Her perfect and unique, kind and loving. I guess I couldn’t blame her—even I hadn’t understood before She had made me understand.

“It is the same. Fuckin’ hell, you’re right where I was after you saved me. It’s uncanny,” she said. “But, shit. Kathy only had me for nineteen days and I’m this fucked up… Naomi got you what, like half a year ago now? Oh, Jesus…”

“She fixed me,” I said. “I needed it! I needed her. I needed something other than… killing vampires. I’m happy I helped you, but that was a cry for help, looking back. It wasn’t good for me at all. The last six months, I’ve actually felt fulfilled, I’ve felt loved. By my Mistress, by Laurie… we ended up dating, too, you know. For once I feel like my life is actually going somewhere positive… all thanks to Her.”

Still holding her head and frowning, Emily groaned. “I’m… glad you and Lauren are happy together? But you know, I’d feel better about it if you weren’t doing it all under Naomi’s influence. It’s not much of a surprise that you two are dating, don’t get me wrong. Probably a matter of time, knowing how you two always looked at each other, how you talked about her… but knowing that this happened at the exact same time as Naomi took Lauren against her will…”

“It wasn’t against her will,” I said with confidence. “Lauren willfully submitted. Oh Goddess, it was really hot watching her give in to what she was denying herself.”

Emily let out another huge sigh. “Please. It was obviously not willful in that context. Not while Naomi had us all trapped in your apartment that night, slowly wearing us down…”

“Goddess, She did wear Lauren down. It was so adorable when she finally gave in, sitting there half-entranced already, listening to Mistress’—”

Emily cut me off again. “Just stop, OK? You know I still can’t get Naomi out of my head sometimes? I was in her vicinity for less than an hour, but, ugh, the way she smiled at me, baring her fangs, fuck, it was terrifying, and I don’t want to think about the specifics of it! I am so tired of reliving this shit!”

Oh. Oh. So she had relived this recently, then? I suddenly remembered why I was here. Those definitely sounded like the words of someone who had talked to hunter_419 as of late. I sat myself up on the couch, looking back at Emily with renewed vigor. This wasn’t the time to be arguing over my Mistress’ morality, much as I wanted to defend Her. Defending Her from physical harm was much more important.

“Hold on, hold on, look look look… did you talk about what happened with my Mistress with someone?” I asked. “Someone other than a friend or therapist, I mean? Because that’s ultimately what I came here to ask.”

Emily stayed silent for a moment, running her fingers through her own hair and seeming stressed as hell, before squeaking out a small “yes”.

I stood up from the couch and nearly lunged at her, rage coursing through me. Now I was the one who felt betrayed, on behalf of my Mistress. “What the fuck, Emily? Why would you do something like that after the kindness my Mistress showed you?”

“It wasn’t kindness,” she said, backing away from me with her hands held up defensively. “Naomi just treated me like a normal person for about two minutes. Long enough for me to get away. That’s just default people behavior. I won’t give her credit for that. Not when she was working nonstop to try and brainwash me and Lauren for the whole rest of the night. Not when she succeeded with Lauren, and I’m sure is very satisfied with herself for getting another hot woman in her thrall, or whatever.

“And now you’re probably gonna say, just like she did, how dare I speak of her so horribly after knowing what she’s been through? She’s completely self-absorbed, barely able to see that anyone besides herself is a real person deserving of respect and autonomy. She can say all she wants about love, you can too, but it’s all to justify her treating people like toys. Treating you like a toy, Valerie. Taking away the girl who saved my life, one of the best friends I ever had.”

“You just don’t get it,” I said, feeling a bit spiteful. “You can’t, without my Mistress’ guidance. But I need to know who you talked to, when, where, why!” I knew it was horrible to be threatening Emily. It’s not what Mistress would want—she had wanted Emily to be safe and happy whenever the topic of her came up. Then again, Emily hadn’t kept up her end of the bargain… she was turning against my Mistress, leading to her capture, maybe. Or that was still my fault, more likely, really. But it didn’t make this sting any less, hearing it from Emily. I had trusted her too.

She looked back at me with fire in her eyes. “Back off, and I’ll fucking tell you.”

“S-sorry,” I said, backing myself away toward the couch and loosing the tension in my shoulders. “Please… I’m so scared for Her, if you did anything, know anything…”

“hunter_419 messaged me on Clamor a couple of days ago. Got me in a group message with this girl Caroline Hanson. She’s like, her apprentice. Her protégé,” Emily explained, looking away from me, speaking quietly. So that was who ch was. hunter_419’s closest ally… she didn’t work alone, I guessed. It made sense, with those tracks on the beach leading off in two directions. And having a partner to lean on would make vampire hunting quite a bit safer than it was doing it alone.

“hunter_419 sent Caroline over to meet me, here at my apartment. Apparently she was too busy to come herself. Caroline asked me everything I knew about Naomi Rennt. Spoke to me calmly, telling me justice was going to be done and that sort of thing. This girl… she’s really fucked up about vampires. More than you ever were. She really wants them to suffer, it seemed like.”

“And you condone that?” I shouted, moving back toward her.

She shook her head in panic. “N-no, not really. It kind of freaked me out, actually. I think Naomi’s reaping what she’s sowed, basically, but I don’t think she really deserves to suffer… no one does. The whole vampire hunting thing is a lot to me. You know it always made me uncomfortable… I just wish there was a better way to give thralls their free will back.

“And look,” she said. “In the end, I didn’t end up giving them anything they didn’t already have. I mean, I told them about that ancient Greek weirdo who turned Naomi and all, but that’s about it. I don’t know what they would even do with that, other than fluster her or whatever. They said they already knew all about the hotel and everything, what she looked like… all from you.”

She gritted her teeth and looked at me with conviction. “So don’t blame me for something that would have happened anyway, because you were the one who went after Naomi to begin with.”

“I… yeah,” I said, backing myself away again, just feeling dejected. “You have any idea who hunter_419 is? I promise you I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just need to do whatever’s necessary to save my Mistress.”

Emily nodded solemnly. “Yeah, I get that. I really do, trust me. I have no idea who she is, though. No more than you do.”

“I guess I’ll have to look into Caroline, then,” I said. “Thanks for the lead.” I turned toward the door, having gotten what I came for. I didn’t want to take any more of Emily’s time than was necessary.

“Wait, before you go,” Emily asked. “I know I won’t be able to convince you to leave Naomi or anything… but you and Lauren are doing OK, right? Physically? She’s not taking more blood from you than you can handle? Not asking if you like it or not… just, are you physically healthy?”

“Mistress treats us so well,” I said, smiling back at her as I was reminded of what mattered most to me. “She only drinks from us like once a week each. I’ve never felt better, physically and emotionally… She’s made my relationship with Lauren so much better than it already would have been, too. We always talk about Her together, fuck about Her together—”

Emily covered her face as she cut me off. “Yeah, yeah, not what I’m asking about. I’m glad you two are doing OK. Let’s just hope it stays that way, alright?”

I gave her a small nod, though if Mistress decided to drain me dry, I’d be as eager as ever, in any case. My body, mind and soul were in Her hands, Her strong, cold, beautiful hands.

A small “alright” was all I could muster.

“And, uh, Valerie,” Emily said. “Just remember that we’re in the same boat. If you ever need support, I’ll be right here for you, OK? I’ll do the best I can, anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said, giving her the best smile I could. I knew I wouldn’t need it, though—my Mistress would provide me with all the support I would need. I’d be sure of it, that She’d survive thanks to me.

“I really mean it,” she said, scratching the back of her head in nervousness. “You know I still have dreams about Kathy sometimes? Really horny ones. It’s upsetting… this stuff’s really, really hard to get over. So just remember I’ll be here to back you up. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but if it comes to it, we can help each other recover.”

Horny dreams… I thought of the ones that Hannah and I had talked about. It was so hard for me to understand what was going through Emily’s head at any moment. It had seemed so easy when I had first met her, when she was fresh off the experience of serving her Goddess, but not so much now that I personally understood the sensation of enthrallment, how wonderful it was. Even if Emily’s Goddess had mistreated her, wouldn’t she still relish those dreams? I longed for them to be real, and looked forward to having them every night… why would she reject such a wonderful gift? The gift of having her will and thought patterns subverted even in unconsciousness… what more could a girl want?

“See you later, Emily,” I said, heading for the door and feeling a little uncomfortable, a little less sure of myself.

“Good luck, Valerie… you’ll need it, one way or another,” she said, turning away as I closed the door behind me.

Emily was such a confusing person to me now. As I walked back to my car, I couldn’t help but wonder if everything had really gone as it should. I would accept whatever my Mistress decided, of course, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Her judgment had been clouded when She decided not to enthrall Emily. Would we all be happier that way? I wasn’t sure and I’d have to defer to Mistress’ standing decision, but my friendship with Emily fracturing was weighing on me… I really wanted her to be safe.

These thoughts and more raced through my mind as I drove toward home to see my beloved Lauren for the first time in a day and make some sense of all this.

Lauren, an aspiring author, was sitting on our couch with her laptop when I unlocked our front door. As was often the case, it took her a moment to fully internalize that I was there and pull herself away.

“Hey, honey,” she said as she took a moment to look over at me. “How’d all that stuff with Hannah go? Any news on Mistress?” There was worry on her face just as much as Hannah and Gail. We all cared for Her first and foremost.

“Well, I ended up driving all the way out to Emily’s house,” I said, sitting down on the couch next to her and cuddling up with her, as her expression darkened.

“Oh, uh, how’s she doing?” she asked. Like me, Lauren hadn’t spoken to Emily since the night our Mistress had enthralled her, the night Lauren and I had admitted our love for each other. I had always had a closer relationship with Emily than Lauren had; Emily just knew her through me.

“She was doing fine. Better than I expected, even,” I said, wrapping my arms around Lauren’s soft, skinny body. She was a thinner girl than me with light skin, long straight brown hair, and brown eyes behind her glasses. She was dressed in a black-and-white striped long sleeved shirt and jeans, and quickly returned the favor, hugging me tight and leaning into my tits.

“This girl named Caroline Hanson came by her place a couple of days ago,” I continued. “She’s apparently the apprentice of the vampire hunter who kidnapped Mistress, and she asked Emily all sorts of questions about Her. So that’s my lead. I need to learn all I can about Caroline, and hopefully that’ll lead me to Mistress.”

“OK, right,” Lauren said. “What’s her deal?”

“I don’t know much. All Emily could really tell me about her was that she wants vampires to suffer, I guess. But if we’ve got her name, she’ll only be able to hide so well. I’ve done this kind of detective work before, when I was researching Mistress.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I remember you searching the web for Her name for weeks, going door-to-door asking if people had ever seen anything at the hotel…”

“But now I have better reasons to be doing this,” I said, feeling self-conscious again. Crushing guilt overcame me whenever I thought of that time, not all that many months ago still, though it felt like a different chapter of my life entirely, nothing more to a prelude to my destined place at my Mistress’ feet.

“You do,” Lauren said, smiling at me and squeezing me tight, no doubt trying to cheer me up. She grabbed my face to kiss me on the lips, and I remembered how much I loved her, my heart aflutter.

“Well, I should go look into her,” I said. “I don’t want to keep Mistress waiting.” I had to keep myself energized, keep myself believing that I would save Her. There was no time for despair. Regardless of what was right or wrong, I belonged to my Mistress, and I needed to be sure I wouldn’t end up like Emily—not now, with so much on the line.

I walked back to the bedroom, finding Lauren trailing behind me with her laptop in hand.

“You coming?” I asked.

“I figure I can at least sit on the bed behind you and offer some moral support, my love,” she said. Since we had started dating, Lauren slept in my room most nights since my room and bed were a little bigger than hers, and she spent a lot of time there during the day too. I loved being in close proximity with her.

I fired up my computer and got to web searches, first for “Caroline Hanson New England”. Good, good, most of the results seemed to point to a really fit-looking girl with dark skin and curly black hair, 23 years old according to her social media profiles. Most definitely not old enough to be hunter_419, so that put that off the table—she looked nothing like hunter_419’s photos anyway. She seemed to live somewhere in northern Vermont… not exactly close by, but it would only be a couple of hours to drive from here. Of course, confronting her without a plan would be a terrible idea. Even if I found her personal address, there would be no telling where she and her supposed mentor would be keeping my Mistress, and I doubted that she’d just tell me.

Comparing with the photo of hunter_419 that Hannah had forwarded me from the Clamor server, I looked through every photo that Caroline had ever posted on her social media. After a bit of digging, I found a photo she had taken in Italy… presumably during that same vampire hunt that she went on with hunter_419 to kill Helena Cherisi. It showed Caroline standing in lush green mountains against a beautiful blue sky, posing with a big smile on her face, and next to her was hunter_419. She was looking a lot older, and she had cut her hair a bit shorter than the ten-year-old photo showed. There was a smile on her face that seemed almost unfitting, maybe forced. Maybe that was just my imagination, what I wanted to think of the woman who had presumably kidnapped her Mistress.

The image’s caption read “me n nikki in the hills of calabria, italy. seein the sights before we take on our biggest challenge yet! ;)”.

I could only assume that she was referring to their upcoming vampire hunt. How could these two be so callous? Even in my worst days I had never been so dismissive of my Mistress’ kind. They were strong, powerful, manipulative… to be taken seriously, even before I was submitting myself to Her. No laughing matter, that was sure. Were these two really so assured of their hatred of my Mistress and her kind that they would brush something as huge as this off, like they were off shooting deer in the woods? It made me sick.

In any case, her name was Nikki, apparently. Maybe short for Veronica or Nicole or something? That was big. And Nikki and Caroline seemed like they were probably pretty close—they were friends, not just a mentor and a protégé, though Nikki looked like she was probably 10 years older than Caroline. Obviously, it didn’t come close to the age difference between my Mistress and I, though.

Caroline probably hadn’t been working with Nikki for all too long, I could intuit. Nikki had been doing this for almost a decade, after all—Caroline would have been in early high school when her mentor’s vampire hunting career began. It wasn’t impossible, I supposed, but I doubted that their friendship would have lasted long enough to be traveling overseas together if it had started with some good old fashioned child endangerment.

“So I found this,” I said, motioning from Lauren to my computer monitor. “hunter_419, out in the wild. Her name’s Nikki, I guess.”

“This is who kidnapped our Mistress?” she said, leaning in close to get a good look at the picture.

“I think so. She’s done a hell of a job concealing her identity, especially compared to Caroline. She didn’t even show up to talk to Emily herself.”

“Huh, did Emily say a reason why? Was it really just to conceal her identity?” My wonderful girlfriend leaned in to give me a kiss, which I eagerly returned. She had such soft and wonderful lips…

“Emily said that Caroline said that Nikki was busy.”

“But she’s so secretive… what do you think she’s hiding compared to Caroline?” Lauren asked, tilting her head. “Doesn’t seem like you had much trouble looking her up. I mean, I know that if their identities were out in the open, they would be ripe for Mistress’ taking, but it’s not like they’re using their real names anyway. I mean, you kept your last name private too, as I recall.” Lauren breathed in and moaned a little as she spoke about our Mistress, overcome with the pleasure of submission. The two of us would probably fuck each other over it tonight, united in being Hers.

Hiding something… I hadn’t really considered that. Lauren didn’t understand the facts as well as I did, but maybe that let her look at this problem from a different angle. So with only that photo on Caroline’s social media from her entire time in Italy, maybe something happened on that trip that made her and Nikki more distant? What could have happened that would do that…?

An idea crossed my mind, something that had me sweating right off the bat with the terror of possibilities. A way in which all this could be so much worse.

“Oh, Goddess,” I said. “Maybe she is hiding something.” I pulled up Clamor on my computer and sent a message to Hannah, suddenly terrified. I needed to ask her to check something, just to make sure I wouldn’t be losing sleep over it. It was a slim possibility, but not completely unimaginable, I guessed.

<valerie_h> Hey Hannah.

Can you do a quick check on the server for me…

hunter_419 sends photos of her vampire kills right?

And shows herself in the photo?

It’s standard procedure pretty much.

See how many of those show her in the photo

<hannahsparkles> sure, give me a sec :(

oogh yeah she’s there in all of them, usually turned away from the camera and stuff

gross corpses ><

fuck i hope this doesn’t happen to Mistress

ok she’s not in the most recent photo actually? with helena cherisi? there’s someone holding the body in place for the photo but i think they have darker skin than hunter_419

can’t see their face

<valerie_h> Shit, that’s not what I wanted to hear. But it is what I was remembering.

Thanks for checking, Hannah. I’ll get back to you.

I was almost hyperventilating now. That was Caroline holding the body, right? I think that sounded right. I hadn’t considered this when we looked at the photos earlier since I hadn’t been suspecting anything. Still unlikely, probably, but I really felt like I needed to confirm this one way or the other now. Not that I’d be able to, definitively, without seeing Nikki myself, in person or otherwise…

“What’s wrong, honey?” Lauren asked, pulling my office chair over to the bed to put her hands on my shoulders for comfort.

“Uh… uh, so let’s see here,” I said, gathering my thoughts. “There’s this photo of Caroline and Nikki together here in Italy… if they take pictures like this, don’t you think there would be more of them? More recent ones? I mean, they’re still working together, it seems like, so I doubt their relationship totally broke down after they came back.”

“OK,” Lauren said, nodding along. It didn’t seem like she was really getting it, but that only made sense.

“And she’s really secretive. I mean, people can be, sure, online privacy and all, but you’re right—as long as she keeps her name obscured on the server, people really wouldn’t have a lot on her. I would be shit out of luck on finding anything about who ch and hunter_419 were without Emily.

“And yet she’s still got these photos online! On Caroline’s social media page, even. So clearly she’s not completely against having some kind of online footprint.” I was huffing and puffing. Maybe I really was onto something…? Bad news if so.

“Right, yeah, I think that makes sense,” Lauren said, holding my hand and squeezing it tight.

“So she’s not a complete recluse. She’s certainly not having Caroline do all of her dirty work or anything. The tracks that Gail and I found on the beach would make more sense if two people were involved. One up on the cliff, several hundred feet away from Mistress, aiming at Her and shooting the silver bullet. And another down on the beach, lying in wait to drag Her away after She was shot. Two sets of footprints converging in the parking lot. A car they arrived and left in together.

“But it’s not just that simple. Like anyone, Mistress is heavy—I mean, you remember how even I had a bit of trouble princess carrying you a couple of months ago, right? At the very least, it’s pretty awkward. Takes some doing… less if you do it a lot, I’m sure, but still. And I noticed earlier on the beach that the tracks of Mistress’ body ended really cleanly, like someone picked Her up without much effort at all.”

“Right, so what’s the point?” Lauren asked.

“The one time she seemed to be there in person, it was in the middle of the night, Laurie,” I said. “I’ll need to do a lot more research before I’m sure, but I think hunter_419 might have become a vampire herself.”