The Substitute Sire (F/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 Miss finally opens the door. Thin beams of sunlight seeping through the shutters pepper the floor and kitchen table behind her. They make you shudder slightly.

“Well?” She asks simply.

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

“And?”

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

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

You are very much trying not to cry. Miss doesn’t like it when you cry, she 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, Miss!” You wail. “But twelve of them got stuck under the skirting board and I can’t get them out!”

“Very well.” She 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 Miss.”

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

“Well?” She asks, impatiently.

“M… may I…”

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

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

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

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

“And bring the net.”

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

“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 Miss! Just… not like this. Please.

“Yes Miss. No Miss. Sorry Miss.” 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 her before sitting down smartly on the chair she has pulled out for you. She has graciously left it out of any of the sunbeams, you notice.

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

“How… how much of it, Miss?”

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

“Yes Miss.” 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 Miss.

She 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 Miss. Thank you Miss.”

She reaches over and picks up one of the cloves of garlic. Making sure you are watching; she lazily pops it into her mouth and begins chewing. You are always dumbstruck when she 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 she seems to plough through it dutifully with only the slightest hint of discomfort. A demonstration of both her overpowering strength of will, and the lengths she is prepared to go to to demonstrate her power over you.

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

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

She snatches at the cup and takes a swig before picking up another clove of garlic and biting into it. You shiver a little, watching her masticate slowly and firmly. The water makes it easier for her to keep eating and you get more and more nervous the more cloves she puts away, chomping down and chewing carefully to make sure her mouth is as pungent as possible for you. Several times she 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.” She 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. She opens her arm and pats her lap expectantly, and you slide obediently into the crook of her elbow, slung over her lap on the chair. Her arm closes around you and you look up at her face, which swoops in to kiss you.

Fuck, she reeks of the stuff. Your skin is blistering in response to it and just before her lips impact yours she 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 she loves that. She loves to do this to you to highlight the inhuman creature you are.

She 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 Miss, and she’s right, it is a reward.

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

You feel warm and safe in her 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.

She never uses tongue. You don’t know if she finds your teeth difficult to navigate or whether she thinks that’s a step of intimacy too far that might give you ideas. Instead her 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 she’s oozing allicin like this her 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, she breaks it off.

“Now then.” She 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.” She smiles at you, an expression of fond pity at a pathetic sight. It is rare that she smiles at you, and always that kind of smile when she does. “What’s the mixer you like most? Lamb?”

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

“Of course not.” She nods. “Let’s not get overeager.” She pulls a small key on a chain from around her neck and approaches the cold-iron cabinet in the corner of the kitchen. You watch hungrily as she 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 she carefully measures out a single drop of each of the small bottles into a cup. She always mixes at least two- she says she 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, she 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 Miss 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 her concoction. Miss 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 she 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.” Miss 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 she had forgotten about that.

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

“Yes, you shall.” She 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 Miss expects nevertheless requires a degree of strenuous fastidiousness. It gives you time alone with your thoughts. Most of your thoughts nowadays are about Miss. She 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 Miss’s convenience to Miss’s home, where she could begin the long and painful process of transforming you from an ungodly feral animal into something she could communicate with and coherently press her 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 Miss, you would be nothing. Will be nothing. You know you’ll outlive her. (Out…die her? You’ll be around longer than her.) The notion terrifies you. What will you become without Miss’s guiding hand? A feral wretch once again, perhaps. Or a hand-me-down possession to her descendants, should there be any. Or maybe after her 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 her surely cannot come entirely from her 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 she 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 her 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. She was dead, in any case. Miss had told you so. Staked in the abandoned pauper’s coffin she’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 her duty to indulge your natural compulsions, and despite being a mortal Miss 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 her 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 her duty, and Miss 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 Miss 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, Miss arrives. She has changed her clothes, and to your dismay she is wearing the outfit you hate. The one with the silly collar that swoops up to the height of her ear on the left side and plunges down to her shoulder on the right, leaving the juicy right-hand side of her neck exposed.

She 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. She is challenging you.

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

“Yes Miss.” You say sullenly.

She nods, and from behind her back she reveals an object that chills your bones to look at.

“M…Miss…” You whimper. “You wouldn’t…”

“Hm?” She looks at the beautifully polished and varnished mahogany stake in her 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.”

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

“Yes Miss, very much.” You gulp.

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

“Y…yes Miss. Anything except…”

“Except?”

“Except disobey you, Miss.”

“Good.” She 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.

Miss walks over to the ornate floral-patterned screen that covers the great floor-length windows to the parlour. She 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. She steps around it, smiling as your fearful gaze tracks her and the stake in her hand.

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

“M…Miss?”

“I said move, you wretch. I won’t tell you a third time. Step over there into the light. I know you fear this…” she tips your head back with the stake “…more than that.” She 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.” She commands.

It takes you a second to register what she 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.” She 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 her 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.” Miss says. “Do not move until I give you permission to do so.” She 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. Miss expects it of you.

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

“B…b…guh…because I lied to you, Miss.”

“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 Miss!”

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

“R…right and just, Miss.”

“Because?”

“Because you know best, Miss.”

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

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

“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 Miss.”

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

“Yes Miss, p-please Miss!”

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

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

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

“P-partially, Miss?”

“Good girl. You got there in the end.” She removes the stake from your breast and strides over to the screen where she 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 Miss behind you, examining your charred flesh. “Might need to be a four-drop dinner today as well. Aren’t you a lucky girl?”

“Yes Miss.”

“Speaking of lucky.” She steps back in front of you and puts her 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.” She says, pursing her lips.

You drop to your knees. “Sorry Miss.”

“I have another task for you.” She reaches down to her waistband and pulls it downwards, revealing her imposing-looking cunt 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 her 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 her.

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 her. 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 her waiting folds. Your tongue emerges and begins its work as you gently kiss and caress Miss’s tenderest region.

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 her. You’re almost certain the sudden pain in her most delicate of places would make her 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 her and wrench it from her 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? She 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 tongue fervently plies and pleasures her clit, 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 her, she maintains her stoic demeanour until she’s quite close to climax. You risk a glance up at her to try and gauge how close she is; you know more than a snatched look will incur punishment since she wants your eyes on the crucifix.

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

You probe her folds ardently, your lips and tongue conducting your boundless love and reverence into her body like a lightning rod. As you enervate her more and more you begin to feel her icy demeanour crack and her 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. She 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. Miss shudders, sighs in satisfaction, and cums; her whole body releasing its built-up tension. You lean back slightly, awaiting praise and instruction now that your task is done.

Once she’s pulled her waistband back up, Miss puts her hand under your chin and gently guides you to your feet.

“Thank you dear.” She 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, Miss?”

“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.” She 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.

She raises an eyebrow, but her 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 her, you already have. “I don’t like the silver cage, Miss. 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.”

Her 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 Miss.” You smile warmly. She smiles back, nods, and goes upstairs to fetch your cage. You close your eyes and focus on shifting your form.

When she returns, the ornate silver birdcage hanging from her fingers, she spots you hung upside down from one of the rafters in the corner of the room. With little to no effort she 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 she restates her 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 her dinner guests.

It is good, you think, to be hers.