The Human Girl Who Played Four Vampires

"Don't… stop… harder…"

"I'm… I'm… coming…"

Alice's voice was barely above a whisper, trembling with each broken syllable. Her head fell back, legs stretched rigid, toes curled tight, her whole body struggling to contain the overwhelming pleasure cresting through her.

"Please… please… just… a little harder—"

A heavy thud cut through the silence as the thick carved wooden door was shoved open with force.

Elizabeth froze in the doorway, her hand still raised from the push.

Adrian Dracula stilled, then lifted his head slowly, unhurriedly, from the pale curve of Alice's neck. He turned his face to the side and dragged the pad of one finger across the corner of his mouth, wiping away the smear of blood with the same casual ease one might brush away a crumb. A pair of crimson eyes settled on the girl in the doorway.

"Who are you? Who let you in?"

Elizabeth's wide eyes filled with tears almost instantly, her thin shoulders shaking without stop. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she shook her head frantically.

"I'm sorry — I didn't know anyone was here." Her voice came out unsteady. "The professor sent me. He said I could come here to work every day at noon."

Dracula tilted his head and looked her over. The freshman wore old, worn clothing, but above the collar sat a face that belonged on a cathedral ceiling. The fabric pulled visibly across her chest with each rapid, anxious breath, her breasts rising and falling so sharply that the buttons looked ready to give way at any moment.

He glanced down briefly at Alice, who lay sprawled on the floor, still drifting in the afterglow, and let out a quiet, low laugh.

"What's your name?"

Elizabeth's lashes fluttered. She bit her lip and said nothing.

Dracula stepped toward her and raised his hand, reaching to wipe the tears from the corner of her eye.

She jerked back immediately, dropped her gaze, and put distance between them.

"Don't touch me. I didn't see anything."

His hand paused in midair. He wasn't angry. He simply withdrew it.

"Relax," he said. "We'll see each other again soon."

With that, he smoothed his slightly disheveled collar with one unhurried hand, offered no further word, and walked past Elizabeth's shoulder and straight out through the wooden door.

It was a few minutes before Alice surfaced from her haze. She pressed her fingers against the still-seeping punctures on her neck and looked over at Elizabeth with a frown.

"Where did Dracula go?"

Elizabeth pointed at the door.

One gesture was enough. Alice understood immediately.

"How disappointing. If you hadn't come barging in like that, you wouldn't have ruined everything." She pushed herself upright, not bothering to clean the blood from her neck. "Tonight you're doing all my coursework. For free. And if I don't get an A, you know what that means."

She didn't wait for a response. She was already hurrying out through the door after him, blood still drying on her skin.

The reading room fell quiet again.

Elizabeth reached up and dabbed the corners of her eyes dry. A small smile curved her lips.

The first step of her plan had gone perfectly. She had only laid eyes on him once, but she was certain those cold crimson eyes had already filed her away somewhere they would not forget.

She crossed to the mirror and studied herself in silence. Her eyes were slightly reddened, lending her an air of particular fragility. A few tears still clung to her lashes, clear and fine as glass, poised to fall at any moment. Several strands of hair, damp with cold sweat, lay in loose tangles against her neck.

Elizabeth smiled at her reflection.

What a helpless, innocent-looking girl.

That face was her mother's gift — her mother, whose beauty had been the talk of the entire town for years. Wealthy merchants and politicians had thrown fortunes aside simply for a chance to stand in the same room as her. And that beauty had drawn him in as well.

In the beginning, he had been nearly flawless in his performance. He always wore a precisely tailored three-piece suit in the English style, his every manner measured and aristocratic. Elizabeth's mother had fallen for him with the wholehearted recklessness of youth. Even after he admitted what he was — what he truly was — she had felt no fear. Instead, she had undressed herself, bared her neck, and given herself over to him completely, becoming his personal blood slave.

The cruelty of it was that her devotion meant nothing to him. Less than nothing.

The day Elizabeth was born, he sensed immediately that she carried no vampiric ability — that she was entirely, unremarkably human. He abandoned the two of them that same day, leaving them in a dim slum district, and disappeared without looking back.

Her mother raised Elizabeth alone. By the time Elizabeth was ten, her mother had fallen gravely ill and died in front of her.

Her father's wealth could have saved her. A fraction of it — a rounding error in his accounts — would have been more than enough. Instead, he treated the two of them as a stain on his name. He offered nothing. He used his connections to have her mother dismissed from her job.

Elizabeth had fought back. She had gone to the courts. She had gone to the police. But the more she pushed, the more clearly she saw how small she was in the eyes of the people who held power — people who cared only about money and votes. Human lives were the one thing they held in open contempt.

She made herself a promise: she would wipe the vampire race from the face of the earth entirely.

Her beauty was the best weapon she had.

It had already served her well. Her admission to this academy, for instance, had come through her recently discarded ex-boyfriend, Alen, whose family made their fortune in the service of vampires and was considered one of the most prominent households in the area. Elizabeth had approached him without effort, releasing just enough signal to set things in motion. Alen had pursued her with immediate and predictable intensity, and she had let herself become his girlfriend as a matter of course.

At first, Alen had seen her as a passing amusement — a girl from the slums to be used for a few nights and then discarded with some convenient excuse. But Elizabeth had been perfect. Patient, attentive, precisely calibrated. Within two months, the wealthy young heir had lost himself completely. He declared her the love of his life and swore he would marry no one else.

On the eve of the new semester, Elizabeth quietly let slip — entirely by accident, of course — to a heiress who had long been infatuated with Alen that he would be passed out drunk in a particular hotel room that night. The following morning, she arrived at exactly the right moment and pushed open the door to find Alen and the heiress tangled together in bed. She met his desperate, crumbling explanations with nothing but reddened eyes and a quiet, firm declaration that it was over.

Alen's guilt consumed him. In his desperation to earn her forgiveness, he defied his own father and stole the academy's letter of recommendation for her.

Once the goal was reached, the ex-boyfriend had no further use.

Elizabeth dried the last trace of moisture from the corner of her eye and tucked the loose strands of hair back behind her ear. Her sights had never been set on becoming an ornament at some nobleman's side. She was aiming for the four families at the very top — the ones who sat above everyone else.

She straightened her collar in the mirror, smoothed away the last trace of vulnerability from her expression, and turned to leave the reading room.

Her footsteps rang clearly through the empty hallway, each one steady and unhurried.

The game had only just begun.