I lay in a heap shaking violently. The hunger descended upon me with all its fury, ripping at me, biting at me, demanding, needing. I curled into a tight little ball, my hair covering my face in long, red curls. Hands over my ears, I struggled not to hear the death cries echoing through the halls of the castle. The hunger built up within me, spreading into my limbs, becoming a fire of dark desire licking at me. The all-consuming desire to feed was upon me.

“No…no…” I whispered into my hair and pounded the floor with one fist. “No!”

The poor travelers at Vlad’s mercy were just like my family. Innocent, stupid mortals who had no earthly reason to believe they would be feasted on by vampires if they stopped for the night at an old castle. I wept for them, for I understood their naivete, and I mourned their deaths. But I would not feed! I would not feed on the innocent!

But strange, intoxicating music was wafting through the room, foreign and exotic, pulling on me as much as the hunger did. I had never heard such music before. It was seductive, yet harsh to my ears.

Crying out, I fought the hunger even as I felt my body seizing as it responded to the bizarre combination of the music and my blood lust.

Softly murmuring voices floated about me as the sweet smell of blood filled my nostrils. Struggling against the intoxicating lure of the feast below, I writhed on the floor. I moaned as the fire in my limbs consumed me. As though I had no will over my own body, I rose slowly to my knees. Leaning forward, pressing my forehead against the cold stones of the floor, I tried to block out the exotic music, the sweet, coppery tangy fragrance of blood, and the uncontrollable hunger assailing my senses.

“Please, I cannot. I cannot, please…” I murmured.

The hunger burned through my body. I could feel my fangs, long and sharp, against my lips, and I yearned to feel them slipping into the soft, smooth flesh of a mortal.

The whispering voices seemed to flow about me, calling my name in hushed tones. I could feel the call to feed. I felt the great need to soothe my torment. To release myself to the pleasure of the feast.

I threw back my head, my hair falling about me like a great red curtain, and cried out. My eyes felt hot and burned with tears as my body trembled with the passion for blood.

I was losing myself to the hunger.

The music seduced my body. I felt myself twisting to the exotic drums as I closed my eyes and let it consume my will. The voices swirled about me, whispering in maddening voices of the feast below. The sweet smell of blood seemed to fill my every breath.

Throwing back my head and arms, my body rose slowly upwards. The air lifted me up, caressed me, and enticed me as it carried me from the chamber. Through half-closed eyes, I could see the torches brightly burning in the corridor. I released myself to the power, feeling languid and weightless, as I was carried by the air to the feast. My dress fluttered around me as I was pulled downward, past darkened doorways and crumbling walls.

The music was growing more passionate as I floated in dizzying swoops and turns to the feast that awaited me. My hands grazed the walls and floors as my body twisted through the castle. I licked my fangs in anticipation as the sweet smells from below enticed me.

The Brides’ voices reached me, their joyous laughter and singing echoing through the corridors. I opened my eyes slowly from my swoon as I passed through the doorway into the ancient banquet hall. Here the music was loud and crazed, the laughter harsh, and the smell of blood overpowering.

“And now you join us,” Vlad said, laughing.

I floated to the center of the room and slowly rotated there. Through the veil of my hair I could see the bodies surrounding me, impaled on long, thick stakes. Some of the travelers were already dead and others were in the midst of their tortured death throes. Blood flowed freely from their horrendous wounds, a lake of thick, fresh blood forming on the floor before Vlad’s throne.

Cneajna, Ariana and Elina were dancing about in a circle, their gowns flowing out about them. There were dipping their hands into the blood and licking it from their fingers or letting the dark, red blood drizzle into their open mouths. Elina laughed evilly as she thrust her hands into the gaping wound of a still living man. Cupping the fresh blood in her palms, she lifted them over her head and let the dark vampire wine dribble over her face.

I was quivering as my mind tried to cope with the horror and gore I saw around me. The desire to feed overwhelmed me. I pressed my hands against my eyes.

“You must feed,” Cneajna whispered in my ear.

I felt Cneajna pluck me from the air and cradle me in her arms as she would a child. Slowly, she knelt before Vlad in the pool of blood, drawing me down with her, soiling our dresses.

“You must feed,” she said firmly. “Or else the hunger will claim you and take you down into the madness. Then Vlad will kill you.”

I slowly opened my eyes. I was quivering violently from the hunger. “I cannot be this.”

Cneajna smiled at me, blood spilling from her lips. “But you are,” she said, and kissed me.

She released me from her grasp as I knelt in the blood, feeling it soaking into the folds of my dress. Vlad stood above me, blood staining his thick lips. He held a goblet in one hand. As I watched, he thrust it under the ragged wound of one of his victims and the blood filled it. Smiling, his fangs glistening, he held it out to me.

“You are my bride. Drink.”

At his words, I sobbed hysterically. The hunger was consuming my very soul or whatever was left of it. I threw myself back against Cneajna’s body and she held me tightly, rocking me back and forth.

“I cannot. Please help me,” I whispered.

Cneajna cupped on long hand and dipped it into the river of blood where we knelt. “You must feed, my dear sweet Glynis. Drink for me.” She held her hand to my lips.

The intoxicating fragrance filled my senses as I relented to the hunger and drank. Instantly, I felt the warmth spreading through me as the blood satiated the hunger. I drank all that was presented to me and licked it from my lips.

“More,” I sighed.

Cneajna laughed and dipped her hand down into the blood. Ariana knelt before us and she also dipped her hands into the blood. I drank from her hand then Cneajna’s until the desire became so strong, I stumbled forward on my knees, raising my hands out to Vlad.

He smugly regarded me. “You are one of us.”

“Yes, my Master,” I whispered, embracing my fate.

Vlad smiled and slid the goblet into my hands. I feverishly swallowed all that was within.

The vampires gathered around me, my sisters supporting me as Vlad dipped the goblet over and over again. Finally, glutted, I fell into Vlad’s arms. His kiss was slow and passionate, his mouth tasting of blood and life. I relented to his seduction and closed my eyes, only tasting blood and power. Slowly, he lowered me into the blood and it flowed around me in dark, red waves. My sisters began to dance as Vlad rose to his feet.

I lay on the floor, feeling the blood within me spreading life throughout my body. The power was so tangible; I felt it coursing through my veins as it renewed my vampire heritage. The wounds Vlad had inflicted upon me faded away as my vision and hearing sharpened. My heart began to beat within my chest.

As the hunger receded into a memory, my conscience returned. The ecstasy of the feeding faded and, like a curtain rising, I fully realized what I had done. I had feasted on the innocents in the arms of my captor and tormentor, going against all I had sworn I would not do. I had become what Vlad had promised I would become: a monster that would feast on the innocents.

Trembling, I slowly rose to my feet. I was drenched in blood. It covered my being, warm and slick against my cold vampire flesh. I found myself staring at a dead woman, her face slack, her eyes dead and empty of life. Her head was lolled to one side, the stake protruding from between her breasts. I turned away in disgust and gazed into the horror-filled eyes of a dying young man no older than twenty.

Repulsed, I backed away and nearly slipped. The dead and dying surrounded me as my new family danced to the strange music. It was then I realized the music was not music at all, but the fading heartbeats of the dying, their tortured moans, and the magnified symphony of the sounds of the night.

Vlad caught me and whirled me about. His long tongue licked the blood from my face and laughed at my wide-eyed expression. “This is who we are!”

I looked about to see Ariana holding hands with Elina, slipping about in the blood as they twirled, laughing and shouting joyfully. Cneajna came up behind Vlad and began to lick the blood from his hair, her eyes sly and seductive. Vlad released me to kiss his first wife.

The horror of it all overwhelmed me as I sank to my knees, my hands covering my face. I screamed until I thought I would go mad. The sounds of those wavering, tormented heartbeats tormented me, and I shivered at the sound.

To feed was one thing, but this…this was torture. This was madness. The moans of the dying made me weep and I could not stand it any longer. Rising swiftly to my feet, I drew Vlad’s dagger from its sheath he had secured to his belt, and dashed away before he could grab me.

I raced to the young man with the desperate, horrified eyes and raised the dagger over my head. He looked terrified, then seemed to understand deliverance was at hand. I slammed the dagger into his heart, burying it to the hilt, splattering his lifeblood over my face. I felt him shudder and he was gone.

“What are you doing?” Vlad demanded.

I whirled about and ran past Elina to a woman spasming on her stake. Her death seemed close and certain, but I could not take the rattling in her throat. I drew the blade harsh and quick against her neck, ending her.

“I may feed, I may be a vampire, but I am not torturer!”

I sidestepped Ariana as she tried to lay hold of me, my vampire reflexes quick and sharpened by the blood that filled me. I leapt easily past Elina’s grasping hands and buried the knife into the chest of an old man.

I could have sworn he uttered, “Thank you,” with his last breath.

Elina grabbed hold of me and tried to draw me back. I felt the knife slide free of the old man’s stilled heart, and I moved to plunge it into my assailant.

“Let her be!” Vlad ordered.

Elina shoved me away and turned her angry eyes toward him.

One heart remained, sluggish and faint. I walked over to a man, face down on the floor, his back nothing more than torn flesh and bone. By his clothes, I knew he was the driver, a lowly man in Vlad’s eyes not worthy of the stake. I knelt and turned him over. I was glad to see he was oblivious of this world for his pain had borne him away into the world of unconsciousness. With one single stroke, I stilled his heart and released him.

Rising, I turned my defiant countenance toward Vlad. Ariana and Cneajna stood on either side of him, their expressions a mixture of confusion and anger. Vlad merely looked at me with unreadable scrutiny.

Slowly, I raised the dagger and drew it across the tip of my tongue, cleaning the blade. Once it was no longer bloodied, I walked toward Vlad, my chin held high, the dagger clutched tightly in my hand.

Without a word, he reached out and I laid the blade in his hand. His long fingers closed over the hilt and he secured it back in its sheath. The gaze of his green eyes did not waver from my face.

“You have killed.”

“Yes, but I was merciful.” I was strangely unshaken by the murders I had just committed. My body was alive with the power of the blood I had consumed. I could feel my power radiating outward from me. I was not afraid, but resolved.

Vlad laughed softly. “Is there room for mercy here, dear Glynis?”

“Yes, I believe so. I have done as you wanted. I fed and I killed. What more would you want of me?”

Vlad regarded me thoughtfully, then reached out to rest his hand heavily against my neck. Drawing me close, he pressed his lips firmly to mine. He then whispered against them, “This time, I shall not punish you, for your words are true. You have only done what I desired.”

Licking my lips, I tasted blood. I looked up at him through my lashes. “I will no longer fight the hunger.”