The Substitute Sire (M/f version)

Your ability to naturally gauge the passage of time these days has suffered a little from how it used to be. Seeing as you don’t need to sleep when you are indoors and not seriously injured, the days rather flow into one another more than they did. Nevertheless, you can tell that you’ve been in the pantry all night when Sir finally opens the door. Thin beams of sunlight seeping through the shutters pepper the floor and kitchen table behind him. They make you shudder slightly.

“Well?” He asks simply.

“I… I got all the rice back in the tin, Sir.” You say meekly.

“And?”

“A…and there are ten thousand, six hundred and fifteen grains, Sir.”

“No there aren’t, you beastly girl. Tell the truth.” He snaps.

You are very much trying not to cry. Sir doesn’t like it when you cry, he says it’s disgusting. You wish you could still cry salty water, but ever since you died, you’ve only ever been able to weep crimson blood. You think it’s disgusting too.

“Th…there are ten thousand, six hundred and twenty-seven grains, Sir!” You wail. “But twelve of them got stuck under the skirting board and I can’t get them out!”

“Very well.” He says. “You are excused retrieving them, we’ll get them out with a knife later. You will be punished for lying to me later, but first I will reward you for completing your task.”

“Yes Sir.”

He walks back to the kitchen table and pulls out two chairs. He looks at you expectantly and your cold dead heart sinks as you realise what humiliation he is going to visit on you next.

“Well?” He asks, impatiently.

“M… may I…”

“Speak properly, girl, or don’t speak at all.”

“May I be invited into the kitchen, Sir.” You don’t phrase it as a question because it really isn’t one. It’s more a ritualistic supplication. He will invite you in, he just wants to hear it from your lips every time. He has never passed up an opportunity to let the nature of your curse underline your subjugation to him.

“Yes, you may. Please come in.” He says thinly.

Released from your compulsion to remain in the pantry, you go to step over the threshold before he continues.

“And bring the net.”

Oh no. Not the net. You visibly wince, and that appears to displease him.

“Do you not want to kiss me, you vile creature? Have you become such an insolent wretch that even those pleasures I deign to provide you hold no further appeal?”

I do! You protest inside your head. I do want to kiss you Sir! Just… not like this. Please.

“Yes Sir. No Sir. Sorry Sir.” You say obediently, and you grab the net before leaving the pantry. Even the rustling of what’s inside makes you shudder a little, but you step across the floor (deftly avoiding the thin beams of sunlight) to the table and place the net before him before sitting down smartly on the chair he has pulled out for you. He has graciously left it out of any of the sunbeams, you notice.

He reaches into the net and pulls out a head of garlic before handing it to you. “Shell it.”

“How… how much of it, Sir?”

“All of it. Every clove.” He gestures to a small plate on the table in front of you.

“Yes Sir.” You go to work with your thin, lithe fingers, pulling each clove from the head and peeling off its papery skin to leave only the white flesh inside. Even getting the stuff on your fingers makes you feel disgusting and unclean, but you finish the job as quickly as you can. You want to be good for Sir.

He eyes the plate sardonically. “What disgusting things I have to do to keep a pathetic creature like you in line. I expect to see gratitude from you for this, girl.”

“Yes Sir. Thank you Sir.”

He reaches over and picks up one of the cloves of garlic. Making sure you are watching; he lazily pops it into his mouth and begins chewing. You are always dumbstruck when he does this- even when you were still human the notion of eating a raw clove of garlic neat was like something one would only do on a dare, but he seems to plough through it dutifully with only the slightest hint of discomfort. A demonstration of both his overpowering strength of will, and the lengths he is prepared to go to to demonstrate his power over you.

He picks another out of the bowl. “Get me a cup of water, girl.”

“Yes Sir.” You stand up and busy yourself with fetching a cup and pouring out water from the pitcher on the table.

He snatches at the cup and takes a swig before picking up another clove of garlic and biting into it. You shiver a little, watching him masticate slowly and firmly. The water makes it easier for him to keep eating and you get more and more nervous the more cloves he puts away, chomping down and chewing carefully to make sure his mouth is as pungent as possible for you. Several times he empties the cup and you dutifully fill it back up again, knowing that having to be told to will spell further punishment for you. Finally, all the garlic is gone.

“Now then.” He says. “I will allow you to kiss me.”

You know that this is not an offer you can refuse. You nod and stand up meekly. He opens his arm and pats his lap expectantly, and you slide obediently into the crook of his elbow, slung over his lap on the chair. His arm closes around you and you look up at his face, which swoops in to kiss you.

Fuck, he reeks of the stuff. Your skin is blistering in response to it and just before his lips impact yours he smiles at what must be the sight of the facsimile of humanity leaving your face. You know your eyes have gone red and your face has turned pallid and veiny in response to the olfactory and tactile attack you are under. There is no hiding what you are now, and you know that he loves that. He loves to do this to you to highlight the inhuman creature you are.

He kisses you. You clench your fist to suppress the reflex to hiss and bare your teeth as a wave of pungent garlic scent pours into your mouth and nose. You are getting to kiss Sir, and he’s right, it is a reward.

He’s so warm. All mortals are warmer than you of course, but Sir doesn’t allow you to get close to or touch anyone else so it always surprises you how incredibly hot his body feels against yours.

You feel warm and safe in his arms. After a fashion you can even frame the burning pain and stench of the garlic as a kind of additional warmth of its own. You don’t know if this is what love truly feels like, but you’ve always feared losing it, since your heart stopped the day you died, and you don’t know that if it doesn’t, you could find what does.

He never uses tongue. You don’t know if he finds your teeth difficult to navigate or whether he thinks that’s a step of intimacy too far that might give you ideas. Instead his lips just press firmly against yours and occasionally roam over your trembling lower lip and the bumps in your upper one that your fangs make. When he’s oozing allicin like this his lips burn whatever they touch, but you still feel blessed and privileged to be kissed this way, with such conviction.

Just in time to save your skin, but far too early to satisfy your cravings, he breaks it off.

“Now then.” He says briskly. “I suppose you had better have breakfast. Looks like you’re a little worse for wear. Better be four drops this time instead of two.” He smiles at you, an expression of fond pity at a pathetic sight. It is rare that he smiles at you, and always that kind of smile when he does. “What’s the mixer you like most? Lamb?”

You are quite excited but try to remain demure. “Yes Sir, I like lamb the best. A-after human, of course, but that wouldn’t be a mixer, would it?”

“Of course not.” He nods. “Let’s not get overeager.” He pulls a small key on a chain from around his neck and approaches the cold-iron cabinet in the corner of the kitchen. You watch hungrily as he opens the cabinet and pulls out a large glass bottle with a sheep’s head stopper. Four much smaller bottles marked only with dabs of coloured paint follow, and finally a glass pipette. You watch hungrily as he carefully measures out a single drop of each of the small bottles into a cup. He always mixes at least two- he says he doesn’t want you getting “attached” to the identifiable taste of a particular donor in case you were ever to escape and hunt them down, so the human blood you’re allowed is always mixed together from multiple sources. You think this is a little silly. To escape the house would be one thing, but standing as it does on a large towhead surrounded by running river water that blocks your path as surely as the threshold of an occupied room you can’t really imagine how you would ever escape further than that to wherever the donors of your breakfast live.

Four drops is double the usual dose. A treat. Once the drops have been thoroughly blended together, he opens the larger bottle and tops the whole cup up with lambs’ blood. None of the mixers do very much for you nutritionally- there’s a little in the way of animal plasma and minerals you can digest at the most- but they help you feel full while keeping you sharp, the way Sir likes you. Lamb is your favourite. It has the least aftertaste, not like pig or cow, and you fancy you can taste a facsimile of human youth in it, like a particularly well-crafted substitution for meat in a peasant dish.

Finished with his concoction. Sir puts away all the bottles and the pipette and locks the cabinet before turning around and putting the cup on the table in front of you. It takes all your willpower to graciously accept it only when he has put it down, as you know is expected of you, but your self-control falters when the blood reaches your lips and you hungrily gulp it down, feeling your flesh slowly and painfully knit itself back together with what little human blood you’ve been permitted as fuel.

“Right.” Sir continues. “I will retrieve those grains of rice for you now, before attending to some business of my own. You are going to sweep the parlour floor. And when you are finished, you will receive your punishment for your deceit about the rice earlier.”

You had rather impotently hoped that he had forgotten about that.

“Yes Sir.” You say meekly. “Shall I go now Sir?”

“Yes, you shall.” He reaches into the closet and passes you out the broom and the dustpan and brush in their little bin. “Hop to it, girl.”

You take your implements and hurry up the stairs to attend to your task.

---

The parlour is large, and while sweeping it is not a task that requires much exertion at any given time (not that you tire the way a mortal would anymore) finishing it to the degree of perfection that Sir expects nevertheless requires a degree of strenuous fastidiousness. It gives you time alone with your thoughts. Most of your thoughts nowadays are about Sir. He encompasses most of what happens to you in your existence, after all.

You have to admit, back when you were a neophyte stalking country village outskirts, preying on tramps and shepherds, you had some rather fanciful, mortality-informed ideas of what a “vampire hunter” would look like. You’d expected perhaps a bandoleer of stakes under a weathered leather trench coat. A pair of dark spectacles and a broad-brimmed hat hiding the tell-tale signs of a life yet human but tainted and contaminated with a dilute monsterhood by decades of proximity to dangerous prey like you. A cold-iron hammer and a revolver stocked with silver bullets ready to dispense unfeeling cruelty.

You had of course forgotten what you would probably as a mortal have been quick to realise- it’s the modern age nowadays, and humans, particularly rich humans, are no longer afraid of anything. A “vampire hunter”, therefore, has more in common in the modern world with a big game hunter, houndsman or deerstalker than it does with the battle-scarred inquisitors of old history and fantasy stories. It’s the kind of vocation that, were creatures like you not prey one must necessarily root out in the darkness and gloom, you have no doubt one would see participants don pith sunhats and khaki shorts for, and load blunderbusses with silver shot.

So it was that you were hunted and defeated. Not hissing at the end of a witchwood stake or turned into the sun at the sight of a crucifix to burn to ash but caught in a silver-lined net and unceremoniously dumped into a shaded cold-iron cage, there to be transported at Sir’s convenience to Sir’s home, where he could begin the long and painful process of transforming you from an ungodly feral animal into something he could communicate with and coherently press his will upon.

You are grateful, of course. What were you before? A pathetic, naked, scampering beast that worried cattle and stole away their herdsfolk. A shameful and worthless existence. Without Sir, you would be nothing. Will be nothing. You know you’ll outlive him. (Out…die him? You’ll be around longer than him.) The notion terrifies you. What will you become without Sir’s guiding hand? A feral wretch once again, perhaps. Or a hand-me-down possession to his descendants, should there be any. Or maybe after his funeral you could just walk out onto the patio into the sunlight and be pulverised to dust by the searing rays.

That might be nice.

It strikes you, as it has done in the past, that your devotion to him surely cannot come entirely from his training. You have long fancied that there was something quite aside from your general naked feral beasthood that was wrong with the way you were living before you were captured. That it was somehow a poor imitation or ersatz corruption of the way a vampire was meant to live.

On previous occasions you have concluded that the blame for this feeling should fall solely at the feet of your sire- a fuckup deadbeat who had claimed the night he turned you to be four hundred and fifty-one years old and to have seen much of the great places and events of that period, but who seemed to have an inexperience about him that you very much recognise now in yourself when you are not yet out of the range of human mortality and whose accent sounded suspiciously like that of the capital town of the next county. He was dead, in any case. Sir had told you so. Staked in the abandoned pauper’s coffin he’d used to sleep at the hands of the gamekeeper of the manor north of here, himself leading an army of torch-wielding peasantry.

The point of all this is that you have rather an idea that traditionally in what might be called “vampire society”, a sire and a neophyte are supposed to have more of a connection and relationship early on. Certainly it is easier to consider that the compulsion toward supplication and subservience you felt to the strong-willed is something that was engendered by your curse than to have to countenance the dreadful notion that it took becoming a member of the undead to make you aware of your natural submissive tendencies as an individual. The days of massive castle-dwelling vampire covens with true power over the citizenry all about seem long gone- even Romania and Hungary no longer produce news of such things- but you do still very much like to believe that neophyte vampires are meant to live in concordance with and subservience to their sires until such a time as they are called to become head of the bloodline.

You like to believe this because you think it justifies what has happened to you. Your sire shirked his duty to indulge your natural compulsions, and despite being a mortal Sir has nonetheless saved you by stepping into the vacuum of domination above you. You like this idea very much, limited as your true evidence for it is. It makes your service to him right and natural, or at least a close facsimile of things that are in the absence of a more appropriate situation. And if it is right and natural, then you needn’t worry about being an animal in a cage, or a great dominating beast brought low, or any of these things that you concern yourself with in your darker moments. Your sire failed in his duty, and Sir stepped up to rectify the damage it has done you. You are being healed, and kept as you should be, and loved.

It takes you at least three hours to be satisfied that you have cleaned the parlour to Sir standards. When you are finished you stand the broom in the bucket with the dustpan and place the entire assemblage on the upper step to the sunken hall; and you stand in the middle of the room and wait.

Eventually, Sir arrives. He has changed his clothes, and to your dismay he is wearing the outfit you hate. The one with the silly collar that swoops up to the height of his ear on the left side and plunges down to his shoulder on the right, leaving the juicy right-hand side of his neck exposed.

He does not wear this outfit out of doors or in front of guests because it looks utterly ridiculous. Its only purpose is to taunt you with visions of the ultimate forbidden fruit.

You must be good. You must not stare. You are already being punished. He is challenging you.

“Well now. Are you ready for your punishment?” He asks thinly.

“Yes Sir.” You say sullenly.

He nods, and from behind his back he reveals an object that chills your bones to look at.

“S…Sir…” You whimper. “You wouldn’t…”

“Hm?” He looks at the beautifully polished and varnished mahogany stake in his hand as if noticing it for the first time. “Wouldn’t I? I don’t think it’s your place to say what I would or wouldn’t do, you insolent girl.”

He twirls the stake in his hand, the long handle allowing it to twist this way and that. “Are you afraid of this little thing then?”

“Yes Sir, very much.” You gulp.

“Then you would do anything to get away from it?”

“Y…yes Sir. Anything except…”

“Except?”

“Except disobey you, Sir.”

“Good.” He nods, satisfied. “I’m glad to see I’ve driven some resolve into you. We’ll see if you can keep that resolve while you’re thinking about me driving something else into you instead.”

You shudder, unable to take your eyes off the stake. That… thing is no hastily carved birch branch or repurposed tent peg. It’s been lovingly sanded smooth over many hours and finished with a band of silver around the handle. The fat bottom of the conical head has something carved into it in Latin- at least you assume it’s Latin, even for your advanced sense of sight it’s far away and quite small, and you can’t read Latin anyway, but you know it’ll be some prayer or litany against the forces of the evil and the foul.

This is undoubtedly a high-class, expensive, purpose-built weapon. One designed for killing monsters like you.

Sir walks over to the ornate floral-patterned screen that covers the great floor-length windows to the parlour. He takes hold of the handle of a tiny circular hatch that forms the centre of a large daisy motif and pulls it open on its little hinges.

A tubular, sharp-edged beam of sunshine glares through the window and onto the floor in front of you, forming an oval of light on the ground between you and your owner. He steps around it, smiling as your fearful gaze tracks his and the stake in his hand.

“Move over there.” He says simply, holding the tip of the stake up to your chin like a knife.

“S…Sir?”

“I said move, you wretch. I won’t tell you a third time. Step over there into the light. I know you fear this…” he tips your head back with the stake “…more than that.” He gestures as the concentrated sunbeam slithering through the screen.

You open your mouth to argue but think better of it. Sullenly and fearfully, you step backwards away from the stake.

“Take your shirt off.” He commands.

It takes you a second to register what he said, but with your eyes fixed on the stake you hurriedly comply, unbuttoning your shirt and wadding it up so your chest and back are bare.

“Throw it over there, on the chair.” He says, advancing toward you with the stake.

You do so, almost reflexively, your body seemingly operating of its own accord while your mind stares transfixed at the implement in his hand.

Then you take the final step backwards and you feel the searing pain of the beam of sunlight tracking up your back to rest between your shoulder blades. You gasp, gritting your teeth to suppress the urge to hiss or to scuttle away on all fours.

“Stand up straight where you are.” Sir says. “Do not move until I give you permission to do so.” He strides forward and purposefully puts the stake to your breast, the needle-like point touching the pallid skin above your heart.

You whimper slightly as the smell of your own burning flesh reaches your nostrils and your system is flushed with terror and anguish at the sight of the vile and hated instrument in your owner’s hands touching you in that most vulnerable of places, but you endure. You must endure. Sir expects it of you.

“Why am I doing this to you, girl?” Sir asks sourly.

“B…b…guh…because I lied to you, Sir.”

“What did you lie to me about?”

“Ab..buh…bout the… RICE!” You gasp out with a guttural sob. The pain of the sun and the fear of the stake are almost unbearable.

“What about the rice?”

“You… you made me count the rice…oh f-… count the rice in the pantry… and I did count them… and I got the number right… but I lied about how many GAAHHH how many there were… on purpose… because there were twelve gr…gr…grains AAHHH th-that I couldn’t reach under the skirting board… and I thought you would b-b-be angry with me about it.”

“And because you thought I would be angry with you, you chose to lie to me, to avoid a punishment you believed I would give you?”

“Y-yes…”

“Yes what?”

“Yes Sir!”

“And if I had chosen to give you a punishment, what would that have been?”

“R…right and just, Sir.”

“Because?”

“Because you know best, Sir.”

“So attempting to deceive me to avoid such a punishment is?”

“Wr… WRONG oh fuck oh fuck and OUT of turn, Sir.”

“Quite right. As it is, of course, it is hardly because of you that those grains got trapped under the skirting board. They would have gone there when I poured the rice out, and so it would have been no fault of yours and hardly something I should have punished you for. What else does that make you?”

“St-stupid Sir.”

“Good.” He says. “I can smell you burning, girl. Do you think you’ve learned your lesson?”

“Yes Sir, p-please Sir!”

“That is the wrong answer.” He frowns at you.

“N-no Sir!” You correct, almost delirious from pain.

“No? You’ve learned nothing at all from this whole ordeal?”

“P-partially, Sir?”

“Good girl. You got there in the end.” He removes the stake from your breast and strides over to the screen where he closes the little door. You gain a brief reprieve from your agony before the pain on your back returns, fading into a warm ache as your body tries fruitlessly to regenerate.

“Hmm.” You hear Sir behind you, examining your charred flesh. “Might need to be a four-drop dinner today as well. Aren’t you a lucky girl?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Speaking of lucky.” He steps back in front of you and puts his hand gently on top of your head. “On your knees. You need to learn the rest of your lesson and I’m not finished with you yet.”

Oh. Oh no.

“I don’t like to repeat myself.” He says, pursing his lips.

You drop to your knees. “Sorry Sir.”

“I have another task for you.” He reaches down to his waistband and pulls it downwards, revealing his imposing-looking cock and… the tattoo.

Your eyes begin prickling and stinging the moment you see it. The cruellest thing your owner could have had tattooed there above his perfect sex, put there just to torture you in what should be the most indulgent and worshipful act of supplication you could ever perform on him.

A tiny little ornate crucifix, laid out entirely in ink mixed from holy water. Right where your eyeline must sit in order to properly service him. It is agonising to look at, repels you, screams into your head… but you know what you must do. You lean forward and put your soft, pale lips to his waiting cock. You relax your throat as much as you can and allow Sir’s impressive length to slide down it.

You could stop this at any time. It would be so easy. All you’d have to do would be to bare your teeth and bite down on him. You’re almost certain the sudden pain in his most delicate of places would make him drop the stake and even if it didn’t a single lap of what must surely be absolute ambrosia by comparison to the drops in the painted bottles would fill you with enough strength to easily overpower him and wrench it from him hand.

But how could you think of such a thing? How could you even have dared to consider harming your owner, your saviour, your protector? He who pulled you from milkmaid-savaging ignominy? It is a vile, black thought and you regret it instantly. Such things are unbecoming of good girls who knew their place.

Your mouth fervently services his cock, your eyes now oozing tears of blood from the sight of the crucifix before you searing into them. From prior experience you know it’s very difficult to tell when you’re having an effect on him, he maintains his stoic demeanour until he’s quite close to climax. You risk a glance up at him to try and gauge how close he is; you know more than a snatched look will incur punishment since he wants your eyes on the crucifix.

He’s smiling softly with his eyes closed. You’re getting him close. You redouble your efforts and focus your eyes back on the awful sigil in front of you. As if to confirm your perceptions, he puts his hand gently on your head, guiding you a little and stroking your hair.

You slide back and forth on his length ardently, your throat conducting your boundless love and reverence into his body like a lightning rod. As you enervate him more and more you begin to feel his icy demeanour crack and his hips start to shudder and buck. Sensing blood in the water you go in for the kill… so to speak. Your efforts are so fervent at this point that were you still mortal you would be covered in sweat. He certainly is. Your eyes stream blood as you focus in on the crucifix in front of you, desperately trying to get your beloved owner over the hill of climax.

Shortly after, you succeed. Sir shudders, sighs in satisfaction, and cums; his whole body releasing its built-up tension. You swallow and lean back slightly, awaiting praise and instruction now that your task is done.

Once he’s pulled his waistband back up, Sir puts his hand under your chin and gently guides you to your feet.

“Thank you dear.” He says sweetly. “That was nice. I think you’ve learned your lesson now, which I must admit does make me feel almost a little guilty about my next task for you.”

“Wh…what’s that, Sir?”

“I have guests coming over, the club. And you know how much they love to see my little pet, don’t you.

You groan slightly. This job.

“Oh I know you don’t like it.” He croons. “But you’re being such a good girl now, wouldn’t want to break that streak after righting yourself from this morning, would you?”

“It’s just…” You start, before catching yourself.

He raises an eyebrow, but his expression seems to show genuine interest, rather than the cold contempt you usually got. “It’s just what, sweet thing?”

You decide to go all in. If you’re going to anger him, you already have. “I don’t like the silver cage, Sir. It hurts and it makes me feel like you don’t trust me. I could be good and cute for your guests in a normal cage better, and I would never disobey or embarrass you in front of them.”

His expression softens. “Perhaps you’re right. It does seem excessive. We could look into getting a more comfortable cage for you later, as a treat, but I’m afraid for today the silver one is all there is. And it does look so pretty around you, in any case. I hope you can manage it today, perhaps if I assure you that I do trust you?”

“Yes Sir.” You smile warmly. He smiles back, nods, and goes upstairs to fetch your cage. You close your eyes and focus on shifting your form.

When he returns, the ornate silver birdcage hanging from his fingers, he spots you hung upside down from one of the rafters in the corner of the room. With little to no effort he is able to command you to fly down and flap inside the cage (though you clip a wing on the silver doorframe and seeing the red welt it causes he restates his intent to respect your wishes and replace the cage), where you quietly hang from a wooden bar inside, waiting to be displayed and to peek sleepily from behind your leathery wings for the oohing and aahing pleasure of his dinner guests.

It is good, you think, to be his.