Night Smoke – Nightkind Part 4
Night Smoke
By Smokedawg
This is Part 4 of the “Nightkind” series (click here for a full list of current stories in the series). (Part 1 was “Night Kiss”, Part 2 was “Night Lust“, Part 3 was “Night Slaves“)
Also, before you read on, let me acknowledge the huge debt I owe for many inspirations here to Octavia E. Butler’s novel “Fledgling” as well as other novels and stories with vampire-like beings, such as Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” series and Clive Barker’s “Cabal.”
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Joshua hadn’t been around any of the common areas when Mariah had returned from her marathon hunt for thralls nearly a week ago, but he had been up early again the first evening after it—well before sunset—and she had regaled him with tales of the previous night as she ate her first-meal, which was twice the size of the previous night’s meal he had witnessed, and far heavier on herb-filled raw ground meats.
She was, she had explained to him, famished, not to mention still a bit exhausted, though a quick snack at his throat gave her a perk-up. But her exertions and exhaustion had been worth the cost, she maintained. She had hoped to get at least three new thralls to pass along to her twins, and perhaps half a dozen.
Instead, she had come back with her seldom-used limousine overflowing with nine new thralls, plus the few of her own that had gone along to help manage the new acquisitions.
“I’m going to have to sent a personal thank-you note to those young Nightkind who started those Web listings of potential thralls,” she had told him. “Maybe only one in five of the humans I had on my wish list actually showed up at any of the hot spots that night, but every one of them was exquisite.”
She had paused, lit up a cigarette, and exhaled toward him, knowing that it would arouse him, leaving him both attentive and frustrated as she continued her story. “Though,” she added, “not as exquisite as you and Dusk, who have some of the sweetest blood I’ve tasted in a long time—and Dawn, who more than makes up for her unassuming blood with that wonderful psychic bond to you and Dusk that serves me so well.”
In the end, she had netted four thralls for Daria—Lucy, Adam, Haley and James—which would provide her daughter with a coterie of seven soon when Mariah also gave her Patrick, Annette and Marcus in the coming days or weeks.
Three others were for Matthew—Daniel, Christine and Gina—and they were going to be bolstered by Mariah giving up her own thralls Patricia and Maxwell. Joshua wouldn’t be sorry to see Maxwell go; he was the only one of Mariah’s thralls who shunned him and refused any overtures of friendship from him—something that Mariah had found quite distasteful. Joshua suspected that it was a kind of punishment for him to be given to Matthew, though Mariah had glossed it over by saying, “Matthew will accustom him to his new role soon enough.” Apparently, Patricia had a submissive streak a mile wide and some modest masochistic interests as well and had been intended for Matthew from the very moment Mariah had enthralled her six years earlier.
And finally, two thralls to keep for herself—Hannah and Gloria—so she could start to fill the gaps that would be left by giving up some of her thralls and the recent loss of Walter—apparently to be followed tonight by another member of the pasture, Louise, whom Matthew would “release” as Daria had with Walt.
So now, these six days later, in addition to mentioning Matthew’s rite of passage with Louise, Mariah was talking about resuming her hunts, since she wanted to try to get five more thralls for herself within the next couple months, and needed a bare minimum of eight more to round out the twins’ needs, though she seemed skittish with the idea of them beginning their lives with only 10 thralls each, and was hoping to bring it up to 13 each if she could.
Frankly, it all made Joshua dizzy just to think about it, as he grabbed some juice and a snack in what had become a routine for them both—Joshua up early to keep her company during her first-meal before the rest of the coterie awoke. He’d be even more dizzy soon once she sank her fangs in for her equivalent of a morning cup of coffee, but first, he had to deliver a message.
“Dusk and Dawn were sensing something or someone on the grounds when they were sleeping this morning and afternoon, and they felt it just a few minutes ago when I disrupted their sleep for our kitchen liaison,” Joshua said. “It’s gone now, but apparently had been on the edge of the estate. They say it doesn’t feel human but it’s too intelligent to be an animal and it doesn’t seem like you—not like a Nightkind at all.”
She motioned him to sit, and said, “Probably a Wolvren. I’ve sensed one shadowing me a couple times since I found you, during my hunts in the city. Not sure if it’s a threat or not. Do you know how to shoot?”
“No. I almost made it to red belt in hapkido before my mediocre kicking talents tripped me up and I stopped taking lessons. I kind of keep up on that hand-to-hand stuff, but I’ve never been much into guns.”
“Well, then, I think I’ll instruct Kevin to give you some firearms lessons just in case.”
“So, what’s a Wolvren? And why might I need to shoot one?”
“Oh, just a myth-maker like me,” Mariah said with a disarming smile as she lit a cigarette. Ever since their early evening rendezvous here had become a nightly ritual, Mariah waited until Joshua arrived to have her first cigarette of the night, and then she tortured him with chain smoking—both amping him up on pheromones and teasing his smoking fetish—for the next half hour before she sank in her fangs and then set him to lapping at her Ambrosia. “If Nightkind are the species that gave rise to vampire stories, the Wolvren are the ones that inspired the ones about the werewolves.”
“So, they’re really hairy, have fangs and claws, eat people, and you kill them with silver bullets?” he asked half-teasingly, suspecting he was probably wrong on at least half of those assumptions.
“They do tend to be a bit hairier than your kind—and the women don’t shave armpits or legs usually, either—but they look entirely human except for some weird dentition,” she answered. “All right, having retractable fangs like I do is weird dentition too, I admit—at least compared to humans—but Wolvren have a greater number of weird teeth than a Nightkind. They don’t eat people often, but they aren’t averse to it either. But really, they eat more like bears do than wolves. They’ll eat anything: fruit, veggies, grains, nuts, meat—but they prefer the meat. And they like it raw. They are allergic to silver, most of them, but it’s a lot easier just to shoot them with a normal bullet or cave in their skulls. They’re a lot stronger physically than Nightkind—which isn’t hard considering we’re no stronger than humans—but they’re not as fast or agile as us. Senses aren’t as sharp, but they heal even faster than we do.”
The line of conversation had been odd enough for Joshua to begin with, only made odder as Mariah’s hand began toying with him through his pajama bottoms halfway through her explanation, and as she blew smoke down between his legs.
“So much for the old stories,” he said, a slight moan creeping into his voice as he watched—and felt—Mariah’s hand on him. “What did they get wrong about the Nightkind when they started the vampire myths?”
“Well, daylight doesn’t kill us, but you already know that. Just makes us feel lousy and disorients us. None of that fun shape-changing stuff. No coffins. Plus, we’re actually living beings, not walking corpses,” she added with a wink.
“Wooden stakes?” he asked, as her fingers circled his shaft and rose up and down his length, and another exhale bathed his lap and then the smoke pooled around him and drifted back upward toward his face.
“Well, we do heal fast, so I guess people figured we were immune to normal weapons, particularly if we crawled out of some quick and shallow grave they dumped us in. I guess the first frightened peasant that got lucky and killed a Nightkind straight out must have put a sharp stick through the heart, and the tradition stuck.”
“So, what about holy…whoa!” Joshua said, as her head suddenly darted down and her mouth engulfed him.
She stayed there for a few seconds, then sat back up, and began to rub him again. She smiled almost tauntingly. “There, nice and slicked up. You were saying?”
“Holy symbols?”
“A lot of Nightkind have severe allergies to gold. Probably some priest whacked one of my ancestors across the face with a big golden crucifix, saw a bunch of welts and blisters suddenly pop up, and ran with that idea from there. If God did have it in for us, I’d burst into flame every time I entered Donald’s room. It’s been decades since I liberated him from the Catholic priesthood to his calling as a thrall, and he still decorates like he’s living in a rectory.”
She gave Joshua a deep, smoke-filled kiss and then nipped playfully at his neck. “What else would you like to ask the teacher?” she prompted.
“I notice there’s conspicuous lack of smoking in the vampire tales. How did you manage to keep that secret?”
“No secret. Back in ye olden days, it wasn’t as easy to just light up on a whim. No Bic lighters and packs of cigarettes. But my people have known almost forever how well tobacco smoke in particular carries our aphrodisiac breath. Pipes, cigars—they all got used. But our breath is the key, really—smoking just makes it easier. So people see some pale-skinned stranger leaning in close to one of their fellow villagers in a pub or on the street for a while, and said person goes missing—or worse yet turns up dead and bloodless, people are going to assume the big bad Nightkind was using a hypnotic gaze or mind controlling voice. And so we get crazy Bela Legosi vampire eyes in the movies instead of smoking.”
“Dead and bloodless?” Joshua asked. “Do you just kill humans sometimes? I mean, other than when they’re close to death anyway, like Walt or Louise?”
Mariah’s hand on his cock slowed, then stopped for a moment, and he was afraid he’d offended her. Then she sighed, began stroking again, and managed a small smile. “Some Nightkind still like to kill their prey. My mother is one of them. She keeps thralls, but the longest any one of them has lasted, at least when I was around, was a few years. More often, just several months. She’ll terrorize and abuse them, even as she keeps them sexually addicted to her, and then she’ll just drain them dry without warning one day. It’s like what Daria did with Walt, drawing his memories into herself, but the dark side version of it.”
“My mother thrives on consuming emotions of terror, fear, pain and betrayal instead of integrating the thralls’ loving memories into her mind,” Mariah continued. “And she does it so often it makes her…crazy, really. Deirdre likes being that way. Tried to raise me that way, though my grandmother was appalled and helped keep me on the right track until she died, then I had to fight off my mother’s influence on my own as best I could. That’s why I went off on my own a bit early—mothers have a very strong mental influence over their Nightchildren”
“Please tell me we’re not having any family reunions with your mother,” Joshua said. There was nothing light or sarcastic in his tone; his link to Mariah through Dawn and Dusk was strong enough that he felt Mariah’s memories of her mother very clearly just now. He had a sickening sense of just how awful it had been for his mistress to be under Deirdre’s thumb.
“I left her behind long ago and didn’t give a forwarding address. Individuals like my mother are how the Nightkind got painted as wild bloodsucking murderous vampires. For a long time, for millennia, we did act just like vicious predators. Many hundreds of years back, the Nightkind started to wise up and realize keeping thralls was a lot more safe and a lot more enjoyable, really. We kind of started to like being sane, and organized, and not drawing so much attention to ourselves, so most of us don’t kill ruthlessly anymore. Some will do it every once in while for a thrill. A few still live like my mother and do it regularly, but they’re the crazy fringe elements. The rest of us live by the covenants that were drafted back before the French Revolution.”
“You mentioned Hunters, Predators and Breeders a few days ago. If your mother is a Predator, does that make you a Hunter or a Breeder?”
“Hunter. Even though most of us don’t hunt often for thralls, since you all have such a long shelf-life, we still get frequent snacks off people who aren’t our thralls, so that we don’t overtax our coteries. So that’s a kind of hunting, too.”
“What about Breeders?” Joshua asked. His libido was trying to override his curiosity, and it was getting harder to ask question the more her hand rubbed him and the more her smoke filled him. But he also knew that Mariah was probably going to tease him for a long while anyway, so he might as well get some conversation in.
“Some Hunters prefer ‘purebred’ humans as their thralls. Breeders raise humans like livestock. They…well, they breed them. Ambrosia or Nectar from a Nightkind has a contraceptive effect in thalls, so it’s almost unheard of for anyone in a Hunter’s coterie to have children. Breeders keep humans and use just their breath and Balm and Kiss to hold them loyal, and keep them fertile by denying them Ambrosia or Nectar. Sometimes, they’ll give humans they breed over to Predators who want to buy them, since they go through thralls so fast, or to Hunters who want to have a rare thrill-kill. Breeders aren’t exactly crazy, but they are often a bit unsavory, and by keeping so many thralls at once, they tend to be a bit…jittery and short-tempered. They live on the edge of the covenants. Not the sort of Nightkind I’d be inviting over for a dinner party.”
Mariah took her hand from his lap, pulled out a fresh cigarette, and lit it off her previous one, then put the first one out. She descended on him with her mouth again, exhaling smoke as she sucked him off a bit again, then she rose again, took a deep drag, and blew in a figure-eight pattern over his face.
“Is the smoke just to get us hyped up?” Joshua asked, his hips writhing now in motion with Mariah’s strokes on his dick. “Or does it have any value for you? Not that I’m complaining or anything even if it is just about the arousal.”
“Not at all. We get a bigger kick from nicotine than humans anyway, so those of us who do indulge—and that’s most of us—do enjoy it. Marijuana, by the way, actually pumps up our libido, but pot smoke is terrible for carrying our pheromones to you humans. Clove cigarettes…well, we get a rush from cloves, it’s like a shot of Tequila for us to have them mixed with tobacoo, but cloves interfere with our pheromones. The tobacco in the cigarette will carry our pheromones, but the cloves in the cigarette will dull them.”
“Cloves? Wait a minute, garlic…”
“Garlic cloves? Oh, yes, we still get a laugh out of that. Way back when, someone figured out that little secret about cloves and tried to spread the word. The idiot messenger the person picked, though, got it all garbled and told other people it was cloves of garlic instead of just cloves. For a lot of years there, with our sharp sense of smell, Nightkind made a game of hunting people who had big old garlic necklaces to ward us off, and we fucked around with them just for giggles.” Mariah let her cigarette dangle and started working on Joshua’s penis with two hands, continuing to puff on the butt clenched in her teeth. “I think that game ran out of steam in my great-grandmother’s generation.”
“I think I’m picking UP steam, mistress,” Joshua said, panting.
“That’s the idea, thrall of mine,” she said, and then set aside her cigarette, swallowed his cock and sucked as he came. Somehow, even though she hadn’t deep throated him, she missed not a drop of his ejaculate. She licked his cockhead to get the last of it, then licked her lips. “Thought I’d have dessert before breakfast,” she said, and then nuzzled his throat and fed for a bit, then slid him down to his knees on the floor to lick at the Ambrosia now dripping down her thighs.
* * *
When he was done, Joshua was surprised when Mariah didn’t send him back to Dawn and Dusk as usual, and once he had recovered a few of his wits, he said so.
“Normally, I let some of my more senior thralls give newbies the primer on life with a Nightkind, but I find myself rather enjoying being your tutor in this regard, Joshua. Dusk and Dawn can survive an early evening without you for once, and they’ll get all this knowledge from you verbally and through their mental link with you. So, really, I’m tutoring all three of you at once.”
“So what’s the next lesson? And does it involve me having another mind-bending orgasm and lapping up your Ambrosia?”
“Don’t be greedy, just because you’re one of my favorites, Joshua,” she answered with a wink. “Until I get things sorted out and start getting the twins settled, I have well over 20 thralls who need to drink from between my thighs tonight at least briefly.”
“So, can I ask you anything? What are the boundaries so that I won’t offend you?”
“You won’t offend me, Joshua. I stripped you of your old life and took you into a strange new world. I can’t fault you for any ignorance.”
“You got mad the other day when I called you a vampire. Before I knew it was like a racial epithet to you.”
“It was a passing emotion, and my anger wasn’t toward you, really. What’s on your mind?”
“Why are you telling me all this? Things like your weaknesses. Now I know if I make myself some extra-strength clove tea or choke down a whole jar of powdered clove, I can probably wriggle out of your clutches.”
“Do you want to wriggle out of my clutches, Joshua?”
“Well, no.”
“Precisely. Joshua, in a sense, I have stolen you. Kidnapped you. But it’s more complex than that. I claimed you. Thralls are like an extension of us. You all have your minds still, and your opinions, but your emotions and desires are completely rewired to suit the needs and desires of a Nightkind. Call it symbiosis. Call it addiction. Regardless, you cannot live without me, literally or figuratively. You can’t even truly conceive of the notion, can you?”
Joshua frowned for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s weird when I try to think of it. I feel like it should bother me, but the more I examine it, the more slippery it is to hold on to that notion. My old life feels like some dream, really. And not one that I particularly want to re-experience. Anyway, class is still in session, so let’s see what I should ask…So, is Daria abnormal? She doesn’t have the classic look you and Matthew are sporting.”
“Classic? Hardly. Four generations of Nightkind women before me in the Beidart family line had pale skin and ebony lips, but we’re actually the third-largest contingent. Most Nightkind actually look like Daria and her father. Their burgundy lips are a bit more mind-bending than mine, kind of hallucinogenic, and their skin more like a slightly pale Asian’s. Next biggest contingent are the Nightkind with cotton-candy-pink lips, who are about as pale as I am, sometimes more so. Their Kiss just flat-out makes the recipient aroused to the point of stupidity. Amber-lipped Nightkind are gray- or white-skinned like me or Matthew, and their Kiss will actually put a person into a sort of fugue state briefly; the human just forgets everything for several minutes, and those Nightkind are rarer than I am. The rarest, though, have tan skin and ivory-colored lips, and their Kiss just plain paralyzes the recipient.”
“Well, I find myself pretty partial to your black Kiss. OK, what else? Why don’t you bring Daria or Matthew out on your hunts and let them have a part in picking and snaring their own thralls?”
“Mostly because they aren’t adults yet by human chronology. They’ve had adult-level knowledge since they were very little—if not the emotional development to truly appreciate that knowledge—but hunting humans to be thralls, or even snacks, is usually best done in adult venues. I could get the twins some forged IDs, but it just isn’t worth the trouble or risk. So most of us will let our children feed off our thralls at home, start them off with a small coterie sometime during the teen years, and then let them fill out the roster with their own hunting. I wanted to let them get almost to 18 first before I started them with small coteries, and then to 18 officially—and that’s only a little over a month away—before I start including them on hunts and move them toward real independence, just to avoid complications.”
“Complications like living in their own homes without a guardian?”
“Yes, but it’s even more than that. When we start letting thralls feed on our Ambrosia—or in Matthew’s case, Nectar—regularly, it keeps them healthy and relatively free of aging, but that’s also when we Nightkind begin to age more slowly. Our aging is suddenly arrested when we start giving up our Ambrosia or Nectar, and then aging continues at a much slower pace than a human’s. Back in the old, old days, when people were considered adults at the age of 12 or 13, it wasn’t such a big deal. But these days, imagine starting your Nightchilde with a coterie at age 10 or 11 or something. Sure, the child would have enough of the mother’s memories to act relatively mature about it, but then they’d be locked into a child’s body for decades, which would make hunting down new thralls a far more thorny process than it needs to be.”
There was silence for a time, and Joshua simply sipped at his juice.
“What else, Joshua? What is it that you want to ask but won’t?”
“Whether it’s neurochemicals or mind control or whatever, I guess…well, that I love you. I feel such adoration and protectiveness toward you. I know Dawn and Dusk feel the same way. I guess the rest of your thralls do, too. I guess I wonder…well, do you love us?”
“Yes, Joshua. Not in the same way as you love me. But more than you realize.”
* * *
With Joshua at her side, Mariah made a general announcement to the bulk of her thralls—who tended to congregate in the large living room at this early point in the night—that she’d stay home one more night and not resume hunting until tomorrow. It was welcome news to everyone, particularly her two newest thralls, who seemed to feel a little lost among the seven other new ones who were destined for Daria and Matthew, but still being handled by Mariah herself.
So they were even happier when their mistress announced that Daria would begin moving into the nearby guest cottage—which was, more accurately, a decent-sized house—with her thralls. She would have to continue to make use of the pasture thralls as well, but less so. Daria was clearly well-pleased with the idea of having her few thralls all to herself and away from her mother.
On the other hand, Matthew simmered, and very visibly so, until Daria calmed him a bit by reminding him he had to release Louise tonight first, before he could move on to having his thralls to himself.
“Also, Matthew, I’d like to get at least a couple more thralls for you before I set you up in the coach house with them, just to make sure you aren’t tempted to over-tax what few you have right now,” Mariah added. She ignored his remaining sullenness—which may have had to do with the delay in getting his coterie or the fact the coach house was smaller than the guest cottage; it was hard for Joshua to tell—and then she added, “I’ll need you to meet me at Louise’s room around 2 a.m. to release her.”
He simply nodded at that, and Mariah motioned Joshua to follow her.
Their next stop was a big old pantry space near the back of the house that Kevin used as a workroom and office, in his capacity as the handyman of the estate—using the skills he had learned in civilian construction and in the Army Corps of Engineers to keep Mariah’s home and estate in tip-top shape.
“Kevin, can you fit in some time in your schedule over the next few days to give Joshua some basic shooting lessons?” Mariah asked. “There’s a Wolvren lurking. Might be nothing, but it never hurts to have an extra shot in the house. Then polish up his shooting skills over the next couple months?”
Kevin raised an eyebrow. “Polished, too, huh? Not just the basics. How polished do you want him?”
“As sparkling as you can make him.”
“I’ll have him shooting the wings off hummingbirds within the month, then,” Kevin said wryly, leaving Joshua to wonder at the subtext he was clearly missing in their interplay. “Want me to give him some boxing lessons, too?”
“His nose is already a tiny bit crooked, Kevin,” Mariah said teasingly with a glance toward Joshua. “Wouldn’t want you to make it more so. Besides, apparently he knows a decent amount of hapkido; maybe he can trade you some martial arts tips in return for your shooting knowledge.”
* * *
After that, the night became an increasing blur as Mariah continued to have him trail her as she made the rounds of her home, and the lives of her two children and her thralls. Their first stop after Kevin was the part of the mansion Mariah had referred to as the pasture. The four remaining pasture thralls there, those humans in the current coterie who had been with her the longest now, were gathered in a sitting room there. Once Mariah arrived, they took their turns between her thighs—it was a daily ritual, more or less, for all the thralls. The difference with the pasture is that Mariah didn’t so much as snack on any of them for blood, apparently not wanting to use them up too fast since they provided so much of the twins’ nourishment each day.
As odd as he felt watching four people line up to eat out his mistress’ pussy, Joshua actually spent more time wondering if they were uncomfortable now that Walt was gone from their ranks—and then realized that it probably didn’t distress them at all. After all, they’d been with Mariah longer than Joshua, and even he realized that a small part of himself felt envy that Walt had been drained by one of Mariah’s own, even though he was in no rush to leave this life.
I’d probably be even more envious if he had been released by Mariah herself, he considered, beginning to understand that he, like any thrall, was prepared at any time to give himself completely to Mariah, no matter what she asked.
Louise was the last to get her taste of Ambrosia, and Mariah let her linger there easily three times as long as anyone else. It seemed clear to Joshua from that gesture that Mariah was saying good-bye in a sense to the thrall, and Joshua suspected that with Walt’s recent release, Louise knew full well that she would be visited by Mariah and Matthew later tonight, and that Matthew would be the last set of fangs she would ever feel.
When they left the pasture, Mariah lit up a dark brown cigarette and Joshua found himself enveloped in the complex and alluring scent of cloves and tobacco. Mariah looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. “It pleases me to know that even though the cloves dull my pheromones, your fetish for the smoke makes you aroused all the same,” she said sultrily. “A pity it doesn’t make up the full difference, but we do have work to do, so I suppose it wouldn’t do to work you up too much.”
Soon they entered an office, and Joshua listened in the smoky haze of the small space as Mariah made phone calls related to business dealings in Europe and Asia, and afterward she asked him his opinion on some of the financial matters related to ventures in which she was involved. From there, she made the rounds of various thralls in their rooms or otherwise, to take sustenance and to give them their own share of her Ambrosia. In every encounter, she kept Joshua close by, not just for simple exchanges of blood and Ambrosia but even in the few cases when Mariah decided to get into a 69 position with a thrall for a more overtly sexual encounter. In between the more intimate moments, Joshua listened as Mariah talked with his thrallmates about home-related matters and issues that needed to be handled outside the estate.
It didn’t take him long to realize that no one on the estate was idle, not even the twins. Everyone had a purpose, and Mariah had made sure to tap and use thralls’ skills as effectively as she tapped their veins. When thralls came to her with non-essential skills, she had made sure to get them education in more useful areas. Joshua discovered to his surprise that one of his thrallmates was currently finishing both an a information technology program and an electrical engineering program so that there would be someone in-house to deal with the security system, computers, communications and entertainment systems.
As she explained this and admitted that it was unnerving to have Kimberly off the estate so often for her classes, Mariah added, “I encourage thralls to share their knowledge too, and make sure that everyone is cross-trained as much as possible.”
At 2 a.m., Joshua waited outside Louise’s room as Mariah smoked with a certain level of nervousness, and as they waited for Matthew’s ten-minute-late arrival. Daria was there too, with Mariah whispering to Joshua that she wanted her son to have the one Nightkind closest to him emotionally around to help explain the experience to him.
It was odd watching Matthew climb up next to Louise on the bed and almost wrap himself up against her. Dariah crouched nearby as Matthew sank in his fangs and slowly fed. Louise shuddered at the beginning, though her eyes were half-lidded and fluttering, making it clear that it was something wholly different from fear causing her to shiver. Minutes later, Matthew’s eyes went wide as Louise’s shut completely and for the last time.
Daria was next to him quickly, explaining and comforting him. He seemed both exhilarated and confused.
“Mother, they…I never knew it was like that in their minds. Louise is inside me now. Like a kitten curled up in a corner,” he said with wonder. Then a darkness drifted across his face. “But this is what you earned, Mother. Your Ambrosia. Even Daria will earn this from her thralls. All my Nectar will buy me is easier access to their minds so I can pummel their wills into submission. This will never be mine!”
It was frightening to Joshua how quickly the young Nightkind’s pleasure and epiphany had turned to pain, and Mariah led him out, leaving Daria behind.
“She’ll be able to explain it better to him,” she told Joshua. “I hope she can convince him there is something he can learn from this, and something better he can do than bully thralls’ minds into submission like almost every other male Nightkind.”
Joshua nodded, his own psychic sensitivity picking up far more of Matthew’s internal rant than he desired. He couldn’t pick out anything specific, but Mariah’s son was full of pain, and Daria only seemed able to dull it slightly; not remove it.
“Wait out here,” Mariah told him as she guided him to a long sofa, parting ways with him for the first time all night and going back to check on both Matthew and Daria.
Closing his eyes against the psychic torment he was inadvertently eavesdropping on, Joshua was startled a minute later to smell smoke, wondering at how Mariah had snuck up on him. He turned his head and saw Dusk to his left, smoking. Dawn was on his right, smiling.
“We thought you might need some support with all that psychic noise,” Dawn said. “He is very troubled tonight.”
“Sorry that I didn’t come back to our bed like I normally do,” Joshua said to both of them. “Mariah has had me with her all night.”
“As if we didn’t know, Josh,” Dusk said with a small chuckle. She inhaled deeply with a vampy air about her and blew smoke into his face lightly. She and Dawn were finding as much joy lately, it seemed, in tapping his fetish as Mariah did, and he didn’t altogether mind being their plaything in that regard, he found. “The three of us are linked together, and all three of us to Mistress. We’ve known most of what you’ve been up to.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Joshua said. “You’d think Mistress would have given me the ‘grand tour’ earlier. Not sure why she’s showing me so much all at once now.”
“Josh, you are a darling man but sometimes a complete moron about obvious things,” Dawn said.
“You’re being prepared to head up our coterie,” Dusk continued. “Well, all three of us really, but the other thralls still get a little nervous around me and Dawn knowing how much of their minds we can touch. You’re more accessible and the others related to you better.”
“Plus, Mistress knows that all you see and hear will eventually be in our minds, too,” Dawn finished.
Joshua looked at the ground, almost ashamed. “Why would she move me to the front? I’m one of the newest of everyone.”
“And the one who is bonded psychically to us, who are in turn bonded more closely to Mariah than anyone else on the coterie,” Dusk said.
“And you have business and organizational experience, which she needs to keep things running smoothly,” Dawn added.
“Not to mention that aside from every psychic connection, you’re a little fetish fiend for the one vice she indulges regularly, which makes you even more devoted,” Dusk continued.
“And the three of us may very well live as long as Mistress does, so putting us at the head of managing household and thrall affairs makes even more sense,” Dawn said.
“What?” Joshua blurted, startled.
You really don’t see it, do you? Dawn and Dusk said. It took Joshua a moment to realize they had spoken in his mind; although they could hear his every thought, he wasn’t as attuned to hearing theirs, and it gave him a little thrill of joy to hear then—then his self-conscious awareness of it made him lose touch.
Dawn and Dusk both sighed, clearly having hoped they might be able to continue the conversation without words. But Dusk simply shrugged and continued.
“Didn’t you feel it at all when Walt was released before, or especially when Louise was just now? Didn’t you sense it at all when you were in the presence of all the members of the pasture?” she asked.
Dawn put a hand on Joshua’s thigh, a gesture that was both intimate and not, but still sent a shudder through him as Dusk leaned against his neck, exhaling smoke. The strange three-way intimacy between them was both a source of strength and confusion for him still, but he sighed.
“Josh,” Dawn said, “thralls don’t have to be released because their bodies are fading. The Ambrosia or Nectar could keep them vital nearly as long as any Nightkind.”
“It’s their minds, Josh,” Dusk continued. “Their minds can’t keep holding together and holding on to life after a few decades of this life serving a Nightkind. The human brain just isn’t wired to handle all the strange things that happen to it with constant exposure to the Balm, Kiss and Ambrosia over too long a time.”
“But the three of us reinforce each other. We are firmly bonded to Mistress in a way that is closer than any of the others,” Dawn said quietly, almost whispering in his ear. “We are even more an extension of her than any other thrall. We are almost in perfect synch with her much of the time. With those kinds of support and reserves for our minds, it’s likely we’ll be with her not for decades but for centuries.”
Joshua felt like he should say something to that, but the emanation from Dawn and Dusk’s minds told him he should just shut up instead. Shut up and just stop fretting. So he let the two women lean against him, and he breathed Dusk’s smoke, as he waited for Mariah to return.
* * *
When Mariah did come out of Louise’s room, Matthew seemed calmer, but still unsettled, and Daria led him away gently.
No words passed between Mariah and Dusk and Dawn, but the two women slipped quietly away, making Joshua wonder how much of their presence there had been on their own initiative and how much might have been Mariah’s design.
The rest of the evening seemed like a duplicate of the first part, Joshua thought, but he was seeing it in a new light. When morning came and Mariah began making phone calls related to her North American business interests before she went to sleep, Joshua paid more attention than before, and offered some opinions before she asked them.
She smiled whenever he did so, and kissed him more than once for sharing his thoughts.
Noon was approaching and even with curtains drawn throughout the house, Mariah would be getting sleepy; she almost never went to bed later than 2 p.m. and usually shortly after noon.
“As the months go on, Joshua,” she said, walking with him down a hall, “I will be turning more of the business duties over to you and some overall oversight duties to you, Dusk and Dawn. There will likely be mornings I’ll have you go out to meet some of my business partners and employees in person, which isn’t practical for me, of course. When Dawn and Dusk are with you, it will be even better, since they’ll be able to read things from people’s minds a bit.”
“If you feel comfortable with that,” he answered, feeling a swelling of both pride and concern.
“In more than 70 years of life, Joshua, this is the first time I’ve had a chance to take some serious responsibilities off my own shoulders,” she answered him, guiding him through a doorway with her hand at the small of his back. “I am very comfortable with it. It will, in fact, be very nice to have you to deal not just with matters of thralls but to deal with humans in the outside world for me.”
It struck Joshua then the difference in inflection she used for thrall and human. Such a simple thing, but it spoke to the fact that the members of her coterie no longer were totally human, in some senses, with her Balm and Ambrosia running through their blood.
But more than that was the emotion in it. When she said thrall, he felt something warm. When she said human, there was something far more impersonal and even dismissive in her voice.
Although she owns our minds, bodies and souls, we thralls are special to her, and treasured. As are those who serve her children. We aren’t slaves, even though our freedom is gone. We are something more than lovers and more than family. We are hers, but in some small way, she is ours, too.
It took Joshua’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the semi-darkness of the room they had entered, and then he heard the click of a lighter behind him and felt Mariah press herself against him from behind. He felt the rush of arousal as the smoke and her pheromones filled him, accentuated the hand now tickling at his crotch.
He realized that he was in Mariah’s personal bedroom. It wasn’t a place that, to his knowledge, any thrall had ever been. It was small, smaller in fact that any thrall’s room, but it was sumptuously appointed, and throughout it, Joshua could see artwork and décor that spoke of Nightkind tastes and not human ones. This room was a testament to her people’s history and culture. At once it seemed both welcoming and alien.
Without quite realizing how they had gotten there, Joshua realized they were on Mariah’s bed, a huge, ancient and ornate thing that dominated most of the room’s space. Mariah put a hand to his face, the smoke of her cigarette billowing around them, and she kissed him lightly. The touch was brief and although the biochemical Kiss reached into his system, he sensed something more tender there as well thrilling him.
“At the beginning of each evening, we shall continue to enjoy my first-meal together,” she said. “As we have for some days now. And most nights, we shall part ways to do the things we must do separately, including you giving warmth to Dawn and Dusk before they actually wake up officially, the very thing I denied them today to have you shadow me. And here and there I will tell you what you need to know about the workings of this estate and the workings of my business interests.”
With that, Mariah put the cigarette to her mouth and slowly stripped naked. Her gray skin almost seemed to glow in the mostly dark room, and the smoked swirled around her. She pulled the cigarette from her mouth, gave Joshua one more taste of it with a smoky kiss from her dark, moist lips, and lay back, opening her arms to him.
“And every day, you will join me here as we officially bid goodbye to another night of life—and often Dawn and Dusk with you—to give me comfort before I slumber. I sleep alone in this room, and always will, but I look forward to having the three of you to make it a safer place for my heart before I fall sleep, and you return to your room.”
Joshua almost flowed into her embrace, and was surprised to feel how well their bodies fit together. And he realized this was the first time he had ever been with her like this, chest to chest, sex to sex.
It suddenly hit his consciousness how rarely thralls must be given this kind of attention, and how much more frequently it would come to him—and he felt guilty, a little. But other feelings were quickly crowding that sentiment out.
“Come to me Joshua. Come to me, my thrall and my bloodmate.”
As he did, he felt Dawn and Dusk smile in his mind.
Better With Smoke 