The Professor

Holly is awake when Jessica and Sally exit the tub. She is sitting in her bed, brushing her hair. "Holly, Mistress Jessica needs to hunt. Can you suggest any appetizing humans in the building?"

"There is a very beautiful professor a few floors above...8a I think.... We have yoga class together. She's so elegant" Holly gushes. "I'm sure she will taste amazing."

"Thanks Holly," Sally says, pecking her on the cheek.

Sally and Jessica get dressed in Sally's clothes, and leave the apartment.

Sally and Jessica knock on the door of 8a. A sophisticated woman in her thirties opens the door. She wears a robe, but is still wearing the day's makeup. She stands about 5'8", with a thin face, long straight black down to the middle of her back, and piercing brown eyes. Jessica can't make out much of her figure, but the robe's sash reveals a narrow waist.

"Can I help you?" The woman says, eyeing Jessica and Sally over suspiciously.

"Don't scream. We are going to come in. You will obey us. Understood?" Jessica commands, bending the woman's will to her own. The woman nods, and Sally and Jessica enter the apartment, closing the door behind them. The woman wears a stunning ruby necklace, which seems out of place given her laid back outfit. Jessica thinks the jewel is faintly glowing, but it must be a trick of the light.

Jessica observes the decor of the apartment. A poster from the cult film Vampyros Lesbos hangs on the wall, but Jessica hasn't seen it. A vampire kink? Jessica wonders. Nestled asking history texts, Jessica spots a copy of The Well of Loneliness on the professor's bookshelf.

"My name is Charlotte" the woman says, extending her hand. Jessica shakes it, bewildered at the forwardness of her thrall. Charlotte slightly opens her robe, tilting her neck to the side. "Are you thirsty?" Charlotte asks.

Charlotte

Charlotte notices the surprise on the faces of Sally and Jessica. "No, I'm not enthralled. I did a ritual to guard against that, but nice to know that it works."

She holds up her ruby necklace. "I bought this in Budapest. The old shop clerk told me it glowed in the presence of a vampire. I figured it was probably bunk, but had read about a similar amulet before. I guess it was worth it!" She laughs.

Jessica and Sally are stunned, speechless.

"I'm a professor of history at the University. My research focuses on occult and supernatural mythology in post-Renaissance Europe. You could say that I have always had an obsession with vampires. My thesis was on Countess Bathory and blood magic. I just knew that vampires were real. That real goddeses walked the Earth among us. That one day a vampiress would find me" the professor says hurriedly. "You have to tell me everything!"

Jessica is at a lot for words. This is beyond strange. This is dangerous, but this woman could be valuable to me she thinks. Jessica decides to test the waters.

"Charlotte, do you pledge your allegiance, and your blood, to me?" Jessica tries to say officiously, but realizes that it comes out sounding like some cheesy 1970s vampire movie villain.

Charlotte doesn't care. She kneels before Jessica, and holds up her upturned wrist. "Let me serve you" she says solemnly.

Sally seems envious, uneager to share her current spot as Jessica's companion.

Jessica is making this up as she goes along, enjoying the camp of it all. Charlotte is taking it dead serious. "Sally, bring me a knife from the kitchen" Jessica says, continuing to improvise. Sally hands Jessica the knife. Jessica slices open her palm and drips her blood into Charlotte's eager mouth. Charlotte, presumptuously, grabs Jessica's wrist and starts sucking on her hand. "In my blood, you are bound to me" Jessica says, and lifts the woman to her feet. She strikes, sinking her fangs into the woman's neck, sucking for a few moments before closing the wound with her saliva, the ad hoc ritual "complete". Sally is leaning against the wall, pouting.

"That felt amazing Mistress...." Charlotte says, unsure what to say next.

"Mistress Jessica" Jessica offers, "and this is my servant, Sally". Sally is clearly dismayed at the status of servant and not companion.

"Are you still thirsty, Mistress Jessica?" Charlotte asks.

"Always" Jessica vamps, tremendously enjoying the campy character that she is playing for Charlotte. Charlotte retrieves her cell phone, and calls some of her students. "Can you please come to my apartment?.... Yes, 8a..... There are some urgent matters that I need to discuss with you. See you at 10... bye."

Jessica sits with the two humans around a kitchen table, chatting, as Jessica waits for her take out. She tells Charlotte about vampirism, but leaves out everything about Elizabeth and how she and Sally got to the apartment building. Jessica explains the strength, the speed, and tries to describe the sublimity of feeding. After asking several questions, Jessica probes on Charlotte's story. Charlotte begins her tale.

My grandmother was from Hungary, well Austria-Hungary then. When I was a little girl, she'd tell me stories about her mother, my great grandmother, Sarah. Sarah worked as a housekeeper in a large Manor in the countryside. She said her employer, a beautiful pale lady, never seemed to age. She described several odd things. Young women would enter the manor, promised work, but Sarah never saw them leave. She frequently cleaned blood from various places in the manor. She told my grandmother about large gaps in her memory, where she knew that she was working at the manor but couldn't remember what she did.

One night, she was working late in the manor, when she heard moaning coming from the Lady's study. The help was never to enter the study, not even to clean. Her curiosity got the better of her. She crept to the study and peeked through a crack in the door. A young girl, one of the peasants who had come looking for a job, was naked on the Lady's desk. The lady was bent over her, biting her breast, a hand covering her mouth, the other gripping her shoulder.

My great grandmother, Sarah, fled the manor, and the town, with my grandmother that very night. She used her life savings to book passage to America and never looked back. She never stopped warning my grandmother about vampires.

My mother hated these stories. She had heard this from my grandmother as a child, and thought it was total nonsense. My grandmother could only tell them to me when I was alone, because of how irate my mother would become. But I believed every word as a child. I never stopped believing.

As a teen, I read everything I could about vampires. I was obsessed. Most of it seemed hokey (garlic, really?), but there was too much there to be all made up. I trained as a historian, and my research eventually led me to several conclusions. Countess Báthory Erzsébet, or Elizabeth Bathory, was real. My great grandmother worked for her in the 19th century but she was far older. The official story that she was locked away by the church was likely bunk. She was a skilled blood sorceress. She was still alive-the stories were too frequent to ignore-but I didn't know where.

I tracked stories of vampirism across the globe. I never got far in terms of actually meeting a vampire like I dreamed of. The closest I got was in Paris, where I had heard rumors about a brothel that served ....exotic... tastes. There, I found a working girl, drained of blood, bite marks on her thigh, but the vampire was long gone.

I tried recreating Erzsébet's transformation ritual, piecing together what I could from books and oral traditions. Consuming the virgin's blood, doing all the steps that I read about, made be feel stronger, my skin younger and tighter, my breasts swelled, but alas, I was still human. I gave up, it was too risky to try again. I was lucky the first time, the girl falling into my lap as a hitchhiker.

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that my fate belonged with the vampires. I just knew it in my bones.

Charlotte concludes her story, placing her palm on Jessica's hand. "I knew that you'd come for me" she says.

Could this Countess be my Elizabeth?, Jessica wonders. She must be!

Just then, the doorbell rings.