The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

14.

laney stood comfortably nude in the shadows of the hall.

she wasn’t thinking anything, but she could enjoy the sensations of being unclothed, of being neither able nor willing to move, of being so aroused she didn’t know why she was still upright. The floor was rough and dusty under her bare feet but she wanted to be grinding herself on it, masturbating.

she stood very still. Mistress willed her to, and, without a word, She had taught laney that laney lived to do as She willed.

laney remembered the other vampires now. As she’d sat astride Mistress ’ lap, juicing helplessly onto Her tight leather, laney had forgotten everyone and everything as Her eyes emptied laney’s mind. But Mistress had come here to meet laney and had brought others with Her.

They watched laney now, and she felt Their eyes on her skin. her lust and defenselessness flavored the air, and They could taste it, wanting her. If she’d been an ordinary victim, even a Life Guard who still remembered how to fight, she’d be dead now. Entranced, with nothing but obedience in her head, stripped and waiting, she would die in an orgasmic moment of tearing and drinking.

They’d suck her dry and there were too many for her to survive it. Too many either to share the blood of a single victim calmly, or to decide which of Them would bleed a little back into her, to make her their vassal and raise her as one of Them. Easier to let her stay dead and move on to other prey tonight.

They’d leave her corpse twisted on the floor, blue in her pallor, dry everywhere but between her thighs. If she were found soon, whoever found her would have wet, wet nightmares from the look on her face—and, unless they were very strong, would find themselves longing to feel the terrible pleasure that put it there.

But Mistress did not will anyone to drink from laney. laney was content. she lived only to obey, and it was as hot to do that as to give herself to a vampire to please it or make it stronger.

she felt Mistress’ mind touch hers and forgot everything else again.

“laney? Why did you come here tonight?”

laney blinked. It was clear in her mind, but she had no problem repeating it aloud. “To obey, Mistress. When i was enslaved by the other Mistress, it addicted me. It ignited my natural submissiveness. i knew i wanted only to submit to one of the Undead and be Her thrall.”

“I see. Did you want to be turned into a vampire yourself, to become one of Us?”

As She put the idea into laney’s thoughts, it felt real, and laney felt mild vertigo at how she’d been lulled into surrendering instead. But almost immediately, as Her voice stopped giving it life, the idea glimmered and disappeared.

laney felt her clitoris tingle sweetly as it went. “No, Mistress. i can’t even think of myself exalted to Your status. i was born to serve and be useful. Not to hunt.” she did not laugh, but she felt herself smile ruefully. “Certainly not to control.”

The thrill was there in her pussy and she let it flutter up her body and fragment her voice. “Just . . . to b-be . . . ohhh . . . controoolllled . . .”

The plaintive human sound faded, its echoes absorbed by the beautiful vampires who made no sound Themselves.

“Of course.” Mistress was pleased, and laney was thrilled anew. “Then you are . . . ?”

“A human slave, Mistress. we are useful to You by walking in daylight, by having no marks. our minds are open to Your reading and command but there is nothing in us the humans can detect.” laney felt quietly proud. she could still pass the metabolic sensors at Sector.

“you suit Our purposes much better than you would have if we had turned you.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

We could turn even a weak one like you, slave, and make you one of Us. The vampire elder’s voice was tenderly deafening in her mind as She read laney’s confusion there and smoothed it out. you would have powers and Thirst, but you would be the willing tool and toy of the one who took you.

Mistress’ mind-touch throbbed with pleasure at the thought of having one of Her own kind under Her thrall that way, an immortal huntress but as helpless as a human to resist the elder’s will. But even more powerful in Mistress was Her exquisite ability to put aside what She coveted. laney realized what the first young vampire who’d enslaved her could have become. It was all beyond her wits, now.

laney stood still, accepting it. she just waited to be told what to do for the vampires.

Mistress told her, aloud as befitted a human slave’s ears. “When you leave this place, slave, you will remember nothing of meeting Me or any contact with Us at all, until you are willed to awaken to obedience to serve Me or some other to whom I give your submission. Even then you will remember only as long as you must serve—and then you will forget again. you will not remember meeting Denise.”

“i will remember nothing.” laney’s vision blurred as she felt the commands soften her mind. It was odd, but erotic, to realize that even the dim impressions of this place, and the vague memory of riding here with Denise, would soon no longer belong to her.

“I have already told your mind what it will remember and what you must do.”

laney hissed in a breath, the only thing she could do under the stillness command. It was nearly unbearable to know she had been given tasks to perform, even if she had already forgotten them.

Suddenly there was a nosferatu presence beside her, compelling and smooth. laney sensed Denise next to her, and knew the vampire was addressing Mistress. Realizing she was as deaf to their converse as any human washed over laney in a warm, servile rush. What could a slave possibly think that a vampire would care to know? Vampires took what they wished from slave minds.

“Yes,” Mistress said aloud, and laney remembered the last time she’d heard Mistress speak aloud to another vampire. But this was for her little mortal brain to hear, not for rebuking Denise.

“Thank you, Denise. Bring her. You’ll get her back soon enough, and offering to do without her tonight will be a useful reminder. It’s not a punishment. You were complacent this evening in letting a mortal take you, but not grossly so.”

Denise inclined her head slightly, not willing yet to join her elder in speech.

“And we must give laney her due for pluck and ingenuity, even if she herself will never remember what she did.”

laney was, in fact, clueless, though she sensed it had something to do with coming here tonight. There was a soft-edged impression of being close to Denise, up against her, and a whisper that might have entranced her into following the vampire blindly. But it was part of all laney knew she would not remember.

she just smiled blissfully back at Mistress and stopped even trying to think about it.

laney felt Denise’s will reach out—warming her, like the side breeze from a stream of fire. Even under Mistress’ spell, the raw nosferatu power echoed in laney’s cleft and she felt a longing to obey, but she stayed as she was.

Someone else walked out of the shadows. laney realized there were no bloodcows with these vampires—just the brace of huntresses guarding Mistress. But this girl was as nearly-nude as one of the tamed human livestock, and she had the same wide-eyed stare laney knew her own face wore.

The girl seemed younger than she was, barely out of high school. She wore nothing but low socks and running shoes, large serious-looking ones that made her bare, tanned legs look even stronger. Her auburn hair had been piled on top of her head, but some of it had come loose, hanging like a half-veil across her glassy eyes. It looked wild and elegant at once, over her relaxed nudity, but she was too enthralled to know how hot she looked.

laney sensed she was Denise’s prey, and found herself envying the girl the struggle that had loosened her hair. she wondered whether the clothes had caught in it as Denise pulled them off her. Or perhaps the girl had been lost in Denise’s gaze by then and stripped obediently, no longer aware of how it tousled her hair.

Her neck was slim and strong, and unmarked. She stood pale in the vampire’s gaze as though in a searchlight’s beam.

Denise looked at her, and laney saw the girl move slightly, absorbing the will of her owner.

“I called to you,” Denise said aloud, “and you came to me. you are Mine.” Denise’s voice, now that she used it again, was not as thought-stopping as Mistress’ but it was close, and it utterly owned the girl.

“i had to come,” she told Denise softly. “i am Yours.”

She stood rapt, and the yearning to please that made her tremble made laney tremble, too, just to see it.

Denise nodded. “Yes. You know that I will call to you again. You will awaken only to my voice, again.” Eyes like saucers, the girl nodded back to her.

“You will obey Her, now.” The enthralled girl turned to face the elder and laney watched her sway as her allegiance shifted at Denise’s command, her will handed from one controller to another. The girl was no more than a warm tool in a vampire’s cool hand, and when she’d turned, laney had seen nothing in her eyes that hinted she wished otherwise.

As she realized she herself was just another such soft tool, laney felt her own moisture, warm on her thigh in the cold of the room.

Mistress addressed the two nude mortals spellbound before Her.

“I will teach you, now, what you will remember when you awaken, and what you will only think you remember. Then you will sleep.”

laney heard the girl sigh ecstatically and echoed it, but as she looked into Mistress’ bottomless eyes she forgot the other slave entirely.

After a while she knew it was right to say “Yes, Mistress. i obey.” she had no thought about the other voice that seemed to say it too, as her eyelids slid shut.

15.

“We’d better leave.”

Laney’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she turned to the auburn-haired girl in the seat next to her. After speaking the girl still looked at her, and Laney saw how moist her lips looked, shining even in the shadow of the Guard car.

She didn’t know who the girl was, or why she seemed so sure she knew—and enjoyed—what the girl would look like without those clothes. But that seemed so very unimportant.

Her mind was nearly blank. What little came to her felt more like dreams—wetdreams of this girl and of exquisite women with short hair and achingly lovely profiles. It was distracting, and it made her think again of Meg on the bed. Made her wish it were her bed.

She tried to think, wondering why thinking felt so . . . disobedient. “How did we get here?” She looked at the abandoned firehouse and tried again to remember.

“I don’t know,” the girl said softly. “Does it bother you not to know?”

Laney faced forward again, soothed suddenly. “No. No—I guess it doesn’t.” She felt the girl’s hand on her arm and her whole body responded.

She turned and found the girl’s lips shining very close to her. The girl’s eyes looked faraway, and somehow Laney knew the girl saw that same spacey blankness as she gazed into Laney’s. She wondered if it turned the girl on as much as it did her.

The girl looked at her intently. “I want to thank you. For rescuing me.” Her breath was hot on Laney’s cheek. Laney held still and the girl leaned closer. Her lips found the corner of Laney’s and worked their way inward, maddeningly soft. Laney’s lips opened to their delicate invasion.

She and the girl moaned together, and felt it on their entwining tongues. Laney felt that on her clit and clutched the girl tighter.

Laney sat in the car and French-kissed the girl and felt no concern about why she wanted sex with a girl so badly. She felt nothing but the growing desire to undress them both.

Her hands found their way from the girl’s tight body and fumbled at her own, finding the long coat and the gun. It roused her.

With the metal under her hand, she grunted and fell back from the girl. The girl leaned back, her lips and amazingly daring hands sliding away from Laney like a carnivorous plant losing its grip on its prey. The thought almost drove Laney forward again to be devoured, but she was feeling other compulsions now.

She’d rescued the girl, though she’d forgotten how and from what. Had a vampire enthralled them both? How had they gotten away if it had told them to forget wanting to?

Not the point, said her survival sense in a weird stereo with something nearly as deep in her mind. The point was that she needed to get them away from here. She started the car, and the engine drowned out the girl’s disappointed sigh. Laney had—again—the oddest impression of how the girl would look wearing only her socks and running shoes and a dazed expression, and the hand that settled on her thigh as she drove told her the girl was thinking in parallel curves about her.

Laney realized they were headed back to Sector HQ, and shivered a little without knowing why. It made sense, she knew. After rescuing this girl from the vampires, she needed to bring her in for debriefing, and possibly for post-assault counseling. Yes. Of course she did.

She didn’t think it strange at all that her memories of finding the girl were seeping into her awareness in droplets which ran together, but she knew she had to wait until she remembered it properly.

She looked for the cellphone holstered on the dash, but the vinyl sleeve was empty. She recalled having it in her hand, trying to speed-dial as she ran from the car to . . . she’d dropped it. Yes. No time to pick it up. Now there was no way to report, anyway, until her mind was prepared. Good.

The hand on her thigh had been stroking her, and she covered it with her own, interlacing their fingers. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

The hand squeezed hers and slipped away, and she felt the girl shift. Those lips were at her cheek and then her ear, and only her strange calm kept her eyes—and the car—on the road.

Then she heard a gasp. A sob. “Oh my god,” the girl said. Laney glanced at her and saw tears running down a blank face. “God,” she gasped again. She breathed and repeated it, and then again with even more quiet dread. Laney listened to the sounds evolve until the girl sounded truly horrified. As she pulled up to the main entrance, signaling to the guards that her comms were down and she had a casualty, she glanced over. The girl was curled up on the seat with wild, wounded eyes, her face distorted with silent crying, cringing at every movement. Laney could still see in her the seductive nymph she’d been necking with, but she knew everyone else would see only a shellshocked victim. That struck her a curious, and then as beneath notice.

There was a gurney and the girl collapsed onto it, while staff questioned her and others met Laney. Laney could see the scene clearly in her mind now, and described her actions, regretting the lost phone, recalling she hadn’t had a clear shot.

Kepler was there, listening. Laney didn’t know when she’d come down, but she stood away, close enough to hear but not in the debriefers’ way. In a lull after they’d moved inside, she nodded to Laney. Laney nodded back, almost as though a string had been pulled in her neck, and felt nothing.

She explained that she’d gone looking for some place to get drunk, but ended up just driving aimlessly around, and she’d been trying to navigate out of the bad area she’d found herself in when she’d seen the three vampires attacking the girl. At least two of them had been male, she was sure, so these were not from the new female coven that was causing such worry.

One of the debriefers commented that she shouldn’t have been in that district at all, let alone tried to stop for a drink there.

Laney glared at the man but held her tongue, suddenly reminded that she was outranked by everyone but the medics.

“Ease off.” Kepler spoke for the first time. “She had no idea. She . . . didn’t get a chance to go to orientation when she reported.”

The man looked at Laney again and she saw Oh it’s her light up in his eyes. He grunted something that might have been conciliatory and let someone else pick up the interview.

Kepler had no expression at all. She didn’t look at Laney again until they were done.

16.

The indoor target range was said to be the most dangerous place at any Sector. Everyone there was armed, but it was the only place where almost no one had silver loads. A few did, and they stood watch over the wide, loud room while Laney and the others fired wadcutters that behaved just like the vampire-lethal rounds but were not nearly as costly to fire at paper targets. But if nosferatu suddenly descended on them, most of the Guard here would be essentially unarmed.

No one really expected that to happen, but Laney knew now how unexpected and even unthinkable things could happen. She felt better when the rangemaster, a tall caramel-skinned woman named Sherry, stood near her. Sherry wasn’t shooting and her weapon had silver, and Laney wondered if she could hide behind her if—

Sherry stepped over to her and she put up the pistol. “Concentrate,” Sherry said in a pause between others’ shots, her striking hazel eyes locking on Laney’s through the safety goggles.

Laney tried. For a moment, Sherry’s hand had rested on the small of her back as she’d spoken, and even as she faced downrange, Laney seemed to feel it there still. She felt sure Sherry was watching her, evaluating her stance and perhaps also enjoying how she moved.

Instead of posing, Laney just fell into her shooting. Doing well would please Sherry whatever happened, and if Sherry was watching her body, she’d like it best doing what it should. It worked. The gun was part of Laney’s hand again before she even realized it, and she was hitting everything she pointed at. At this rate, I should have been able to drop one of them last night.

The thought fit neatly into a gap in her thoughts. She imagined the vamp she’d seen most clearly, the one who’d been crouched over the girl and looked back to snarl as Laney ran up.

Laney pictured its tattooed arms and imagined the next target between them. She realized she still didn’t know the girl’s name. She should ask, or even visit, since the girl was still here, under observation. The Guard medics wanted to be sure that she wasn’t under some delayed compulsion her attackers might have had time to implant before they fled.

Laney hadn’t asked about Meg or tried to see her again. It didn’t bother as she thought it should. She had an unclear but solid feeling that it would resolve itself somehow.

The buzzer ended shooting, but Laney was already standing with the pistol empty and down, slide sprung. There was a subdued clatter as everyone verified no loads, and then started policing the tide of spent cartridges. Laney caught another long stare from Sherry as she worked. As she finished, Sherry came to her again. Laney felt the hand on her back, and relaxed. She went still and looked up into the taller woman’s face.

“I’d like to speak with you, Laney. About how you’re doing.”

“Yes, Sherry.” Laney surprised herself with how moist and submissive she made the words sound. She breathed faster when she saw the hazel eyes brighten to hear them.

It might just be training-related. At the end of the debrief, Kepler had spoken to Laney again, praising her warmly for saving the girl and telling her that she’d have some non-punitive downtime. They’d pressed her luck already, so for now, she’d train hard in-house and get used to what had happened.

It suited Laney: the mindless gym work ate her spare energy, and at the range she could pretend she was hurting something for a moment, before knowing again that it was only marked paper in the sights. Kepler seemed to have spoken to the instructors, too.

Laney realized she hadn’t been visualizing Kepler downrange as she’d fired. She remembered Kepler hypnotizing her in her office, and wondered if she were still under some sort of control. Maybe this new carnivorous Guard she’d found herself working for realized some of its members might try fragging their superiors, and they’d implanted inhibitions against it during all that “hypnotic resistance” training.

She followed Sherry to her office, but Sherry just smiled and led her to the billet Sherry had in one of the residential wings of the complex. Laney smiled as she walked behind her, excited that Sherry wasn’t even going to go through the motions. She wondered if the muscular woman would play at seducing her little neophyte self or just ravish her when they got in the door.

Laney didn’t care. She was wondering, as her heart stunned her chest, how Sherry would react if she got herself naked before Sherry even had a chance to turn around. Right inside the door.

But Sherry turned and took her arm and led her inside. She shut the door and kept her eyes on Laney. She made Laney feel like prey and like something too exquisite to touch, at the same time, and Laney’s knees were weak. She touched the zipper at Laney’s throat and Laney pulled it down. She slipped the jumpsuit off in front of Sherry, next to her, hanging on her gaze, and Sherry looked her up and down. She smiled deeply as Laney slid her bra and panties off, and then the low boots.

“Lovely,” she said. Laney stood still, as Sherry undressed. Laney saw the caramel curves and the sweep of graceful muscle and realized I will die against that body. Over and over. Alleluia.

Then Sherry came to attention. She looked vaguely surprised, before her gaze flattened and she stared completely through Laney. Her eyes closed slowly.

“Yesss, my . . . Queeeeennn . . .”

Laney stood still, slightly frightened and deeply aroused.

Sherry’s blank face swam into a sensual smile and she breathed deeply. As her eyelids languidly rose, her eyes were white, rolled up in the ecstasy of whatever had taken control of her. She closed them and when they opened they were focused hungrily on Laney.

“i have been pleasing,” she crooned. “My Queen is pleased with me. She wills that i be rewarded.”

laney felt obedience flow into her soul like a midnight river. she remembered now that she was a slave to the vampires, and Their will was hers. she dropped to her knees, gazing up into sherry’s leer.

“i obey. Please use me.” her voice faltered. The feelings were too strong—joy at being reactivated as a slave, admiration for however sherry had served Their purposes, painful lust for what she knew sherry was going to command her to do.

Then sherry’s smooth floor was cool on her skin as she crawled to the other slave and pushed her nose hopefully to sherry’s cleft, almost fainting from the heady flavor and the heat. she licked and kissed and felt the powerful thighs spasm and loosen against her head. she felt sherry take hold of her head and slowly she leaned back, as sherry settled on her. laney’s shoulders found the floor and she slid her legs out from kneeling to lie on her back, and let sherry ride her face.

laney came back to herself in sherry’s arms as they lay on the bed. sherry’s hazel eyes glowed softly now, still wanting laney but with the need slaked enough for sanity to return there. she was waiting for laney’s own mind to return before kissing her deeply, tasting herself in laney’s mouth.

When sherry released her, laney leaned into her. “How did you please our—Mistresses?” she mewed at the spike of pleasure it gave her to say that, to share it with another slave.

sherry held her, and as she groped for her own pussy she felt sherry’s steadier hand guide hers there—and linger by her clit.

“A Guard patrol was lost last week,” sherry whispered, almost kissing her ear. “None of the humans knows what happened, though they may guess it when they realize they’ve found no spent silver.” her lips gently brutalized laney’s earlobe, and laney could barely keep frigging herself. “i went into trance and made sure none of their guns had poisoned loads. My Queen and Her ladies laughed at the teflon rounds.”

sherry purred. “i don’t know if they guessed, before She took them. But their feelings are nothing. Her pleasure is all.”

laney pulled her head up and met the obedient eyes. “When did your Queen make you Hers?”

“One of my trainees seduced me,” sherry said. “her Queen had not given her powers—she was, and is, just a slave like we are—but she was an excellent hypnotist, and with the sex she made me very submissive. i was helpless when She came in—we were in the back room of a restaurant where She had commanded i be lured.

“i may have fought. i don’t remember.” sherry dismissed it. “i worship Her now.”

she looked at laney and kissed her. “And She is kind to Her obedient slave. She asked your Mistress if i might have you.”

laney subsided. Even the sweet agony at her pussy receded before the memory of the elder she belonged to now. “Mistress is kind to Her slave, too.” she kissed sherry back. “i have been very well used.” Then she screamed, quietly and hoarsely, as sherry’s fingers suddenly were on her clit, in her cunt, perfect, perfect—

sherry held her as she slumped.

When’s she’d recovered against sherry’s warm, strong shoulder, she murmured, “When will She turn you, sherry? When you finish serving here?”

sherry stroked her, laughing softly. “Turn me? i have no desire to become one of Them. i am a slave. i dream of being Hers always, 24/7. i dream of being Her bloodcow. She and Hers will feed on me while i stand docile under Their beautiful, beautiful fangs.” sherry was almost moaning with how badly she wanted it.

“i must keep myself strong and healthy. This body, that i trained and devoted to fighting Them, will instead be Their food. Their fountain.” laney lay against her, hearing the strong heart best faster. sherry’s blood laughed though her veins as though sherry’s Queen—or any other vampire She chose—were about to drink from her now. “For now my Queen lets me remain clever, and i can fight. But when She wills it, i will stop thinking and live only to be Their drink.”

laney shivered. her own slave needs hummed in resonance with sherry’s dream. Perhaps they would kneel together as the vampires drained them—though by then they would know nothing of each other’s submission.

Something nosed at her tumbled thoughts. “your Queen sent another slave to take you. Do others here belong to the vampires?”

“Yes. Many of us serve Them, here. They take us and we must obey, and then they make us sleep. We forget we serve Them until They summon our obedience.

“you and i will forget this—we will remember the sex but we will forget that we belong to Others. For now.”

“i’ll forget Her?” laney understood the need, but still it was sad.

“you’ll still be a slave,” sherry said, rubbing her back. “we’ll both just be unable to recall that it’s anything besides my pussy that enslaved you.”

laney looked down at sherry’s folds, still gleaming from the sex, and whispered, “Yes, Mistress!”

sherry bit her ear and then slid her onto her hands and knees on the bed, settling behind laney and helping her into bitch position. laney shuddered, wondering how the other woman’s strap-on would feel.

But what touched her ass was warm and soft. sherry kissed her asscheeks and nibbled them gently. Then her breath and tongue were melting laney’s mind, and laney clutched the pillow to her chest before her arms lost strength and she faded. sherry’s hand stroked her belly and held it, and laney realized she was sobbing. sherry’s hand slipped lower.

The finger in her pussy and the tongue in her ass held laney suspended. The tongue withdrew but the eager breath kept her hanging.

Teeth closed on her asscheek and the finger flicked and she bucked, unable to make a sound.

In her liquified mind there was one solid thought: i have never felt vampire teeth.

Then it frothed, like the rest of her.

17.

The knocking roused them both, but as they untangled from each other, Sherry just rolled back against the wall and Laney slid to stand. She was in one of Sherry’s T-shirts and pulled the bottom down to her hips, which it barely covered. Sherry wasn’t that much taller than Laney, and Laney was wearing nothing else.

She realized she was going to answer the door of Sherry’s room to a stranger wearing only someone else’s underwear, and nearly juiced at the idea. Something made her want to open the door anyway.

Kepler’s eyes widened, and her smile stayed the same as she checked Laney out. “Am I interrupting?”

Laney was speechless. Then Sherry was behind her—vampire-stealthy, her warmth against Laney’s back through the cotton before Laney even heard her breathe. Laney realized vampires radiated neither heat nor breath, and nearly sagged back against the other woman as a dark arm curled in front of her. She felt nylon sweats against her bare legs.

“No,” Sherry answered Kepler, and squeezed Laney once. As they moved back into the billet, Sherry said, “Close the door,” and Laney padded over to do it. Kepler and Sherry took the chairs, and Laney watched until Sherry nodded before she went back to the bed.

There was no way to sit without seeming to lounge, and she didn’t try. She was feeling a weird heat at being shown off as Sherry’s little bedwarmer, and part of her wanted to saunter over and try to sit in her lap as she talked with Kepler.

Kepler smiled again but this time it was for Sherry. Good taste, even if it’s not to mine.

“I’m speaking to all the trainers,” she said. “Regional sent down a new directive—special refresher for female personnel, mandatory. Apparently the leadership’s stopped jerking off at all the girl-girl action and decided that female Guard need more than the usual proofing against masculine nosferatu. The usual resistance training against fem-vamps doesn’t always . . .”

She turned an unreadable glance to Laney, and Laney found herself gazing back just as emptily. Laney wondered if it was afterglow from the wondrous fuck with Sherry, but she felt so superior to Kepler now.

Kepler seemed to feel that way about her. Kepler had put her and Meg up against a vampire and meant them to become its slaves—but somehow Kepler had translated that to her superiors as their fault, a discovery of chronic hypnotic vulnerability in female Guard.

Laney nearly smiled. Every woman in Sector was going to have to sit through a mass-hypnosis session with dozens of other equally-irritated Guard, and it was her fault. All because she’d officially been too weak-willed to resist, not set up.

It should have made her angry, but that didn’t make sense to her.

“Anyway,” Kepler said, “here’s the CD Regional sent. You can get someone to set up the sessions, but I’ll leave it to you to make this happen quickly. I want to get everyone cycled through this and then back to work ASAP.”

“Can do, chief. I’ll get right on it.” Sherry spoke lazily, grinning up at Kepler as the guest rose.

Kepler swept another appreciative glance over Laney and Sherry looked too, this time. Laney left her face plaything-blank and settled back against the pillow, staring back at them.

“Right on it,” Kepler said. “I just bet you will, Sherry.” She tapped the jewelbox on the table and let herself out, chuckling.

Sherry kept watching Laney. “You know, you look just like a hooker.”

Laney closed her eyes and didn’t bother to hold her hand back from her pussy. She tried to say You mean I get paid for this? but suddenly she needed to slide off the bed and crawl again across the floor. Sherry slid her sweats off and spread her legs, and Laney closed her eyes, finding her way to paradise by scent.

Later, as she dressed, she found herself of two minds about Sherry’s shower. Sherry’s rank entitled her to one in her quarters, and sex in the humid little box had been mindblowing, but she almost wished they could have been in her billet instead. Following Sherry to the communal shower, worshipping her in front of everyone . . .

Her head was a little clearer now, anyway. She felt a little less like Sherry’s pet as she checked her weapon and holstered it, and the time they’d spent cleaning their pistols together had been oddly like an awakening.

But Laney didn’t think at all about why there’d been anything in the last several hours to awaken from.

Before they left, Sherry carried Kepler’s CD to her desk and took another one from the vertical rack next to her player. She opened both and exchanged the disks, the featureless kind the Guard used and no one ever seemed to mark properly. Laney walked over to stand hesitantly next to her, and what little resolve she was mustering to ask about it dissolved as her breasts brushed against the back of Sherry’s arm.

She blinked and saw the cover of the one Sherry slotted back into the rack. An assortment of Delibes. Sherry tracked her gaze to it, and her eyes grew vague. “From that movie,” she murmured. “Deneuve was so sexy as the vampire, and when she played ‘Lakme’ it was beautiful. I saw it as a child, and . . .”

Sherry’s eyes cleared. “It’s nothing we need to think about, Laney.” She turned, and as she looked down into Laney’s eyes Laney felt herself give way.

“It’s nothing we need to think about,” she repeated, staring back at Sherry, and felt it become true. Sherry had the right CD, and she knew what she must do with it.

Laney had a hot certainty that Sherry could carry out instructions perfectly. Something quivered in her as she thought about the instructions in Sherry’s mind.

Laney spent the rest of the morning catching up on paperwork, belatedly processing in to Sector while also doing followup on both the first disaster with the prisoner and her later lucky foray saving the girl. Now and then she passed women on their way to the training session, which was going on in shifts all day. Some seemed peeved and others laughed to have gotten an unscheduled break. One of the sessions started just as she was trying to ensure her medical records had gone through the system, and the clerk apologized to her, zeroing it out so a replacement could start fresh.

Laney just smiled patiently, and thought about the woman as she hurried down to the seminar room where they were playing the CD. She wondered what the woman would look like, gazing hypnotized up at the screen.

Later shifts were even less eager to go. Women who’d seen it earlier were unanimous about how boring it had been—as uninspiring as most anything else the Guard produced, aside from a kernel of useful information that could have been sent out individually.

Laney found herself assigned to watch it in a group with Sherry, and pressed against her as the room darkened. She found herself looking forward to the loss of control, and looked around at the other women, wondering how many were truly aware how thoroughly the Guard had conditioned them for their own good. Based on what came out of the earlier sessions, it sounded as though many of them didn’t even really remember being put into trance by the instructions. Maybe she was unusual in being so aware of what the Guard did to them.

Or Kepler had been unusually blatant in using it on her, before. Kepler seemed like the sort to want people to know how much control she could exert.

Laney wondered if the screen would put them all to sleep by showing the light. Then Sherry took her hand. She looked over, and there was something in Sherry’s eyes . . .

. . . sherry’s eyes . . .

laney exhaled the breath Laney had taken in and let her fellow slave’s gaze take her again.

you will not see anything that you see. laney’s heart beat faster as Mistress’ will sheathed her own and made it nothing. you will not hear anything that you hear.

The minds around you will see and hear what We have prepared for them, and submit to it. they are not yet ready to obey Us as you do, but they will be able to do what we need.

laney sat amid the impatient humans, clinging to sherry’s hand, watching sherry’s pretty blankness as her own Queen programmed her. sherry had belonged to Them longer, and had a more complex role in whatever They planned.

But presently sherry seemed to awaken. her eyes had the dull sheen of a woman who’d been deeply fucked. laney didn’t envy her. It was enough to know she’d been this slave’s reward once, and might be again.

sherry’s gaze focused and she smiled, leaning to laney’s ear. she kissed it once, delicately, and laney heard the chuckle from the human women behind them who thought they were just looking at a pair of lovers.

“They knew about the training already,” sherry whispered gleefully. laney squeezed her thighs together. It meant the vampires had made human slaves higher up in the Guard. she could barely keep from masturbating as she thought about how much of an advantage They had. Pawns as unaware as she and sherry were, but mindlessly obedient whenever a nosferatu touched their minds with a command—and in key positions. Reporting and sabotaging, and usually asleep to what good little slaves they’d been turned into.

“They left the Guard’s trance triggers in place. Every conditioned mind in this room is ready to be controlled, and the familiar signals will just open them completely.

“Then, the truth our Mistresses teach will become part of their minds.”

“Shhh,” the human behind them whispered. “It’s about to start.”

laney and sherry straightened, smiling. Yes. i mustn’t distract you from being conquered by my Mistress’ mind control. laney still gripped sherry’s hand, fantasizing about what the more experienced slave might be envisioning for the prey all around them, waiting to be mindfucked.

It started.

There was the Guard logo and the gee-whiz graphics, words and symbols lunging here and there on the screen. laney heard chuckles around her as the familiar format announced itself. Then she heard the laughing falter and fade away as the screen began flickering, in the rhythm she remembered, now, from Kepler’s office and before. As Mistress had instructed her, she felt nothing, though it stirred her to recall how deeply she’d forgotten falling after other sessions she’d been through, before she’d been enslaved.

But she was a slave now, obedient to beings infinitely more powerful than the psychologists who’d assembled this light show.

The light show was more than enough to stun the roomful of restive Guard into staring blankly at the screen. laney was excitingly aware of how every woman’s breathing was quietly shifting into the cadence of the blink-pulse as they lost themselves to it. Only her own deeper submission kept that from seducing her into joining the chorus of tamely breathing sleepers.

laney looked around, and saw the others sitting attentively, faces placid, eyes reflecting the screen. The screen itself had lost all pretense of showing anything but the hypnotic flash. On the sound system, the too-eager music and fulsome intro narration had long since given way to a soft, compelling rhythm that contained the light-pulse beat but went beyond it. Here and there she could hear panting, as quicker minds among the woman that resisted the slower induction had been ensnared by their very ability to detect the faster, more seductive beat.

she gripped sherry’s hand tighter. The CD was not interactive. It had no way to detect when its subjects had surrendered to its effects, and it had been designed just to put them deeper and deeper.

But when the voice began, it was female, and endlessly, patiently hungry, and it was not anyone from the Guard. It could have had laney’s soul from her without asking, if her soul wasn’t already Someone else’s. she could only guess how it felt to the hypnotized women around her, hearing it for the first time.

Now it softly demanded things from its helpless listeners, things that not even the Guard would ask.

The listeners’ panting told laney how badly they would want to do them.

18.

Laney spent time on the range under Sherry’s loving but severe eye, deeply relaxed, and shooting perfectly. But after a while, she asked permission to stop, and Sherry let her go. Sherry seemed preoccupied, anyway, with another young woman who was staring at her with glazing eyes. Laney didn’t feel jealous, and instead found herself smiling at what the girl would be feeling soon, though she didn’t know what that was.

She was still smiling outside the medical annex, the place where they kept Meg, but she found it easier to visit the place’s second patient, the girl she’d saved from the vampire attack.

Her name was Trina. She sat on her bed in a loose Guard T-shirt and baggy shorts, but they only highlighted how tight and shapely her body was. She looked up at Laney and smiled back at her, and Laney felt a softness inside as she sat beside Trina uninvited.

Trina put an arm around her and flowed against her. Even now she seemed calm. Laney realized someone in Trina’s situation might be agitated—still terrorized even in this safer place, anxious to leave and put it all behind her—but Trina was at peace.

“I called my parents,” she said softly before Laney could ask. “They were fine with my staying here as long as the Life Guard thinks I should.”

Laney got a warm feeling about Trina staying here, too. Without thinking, she leaned to kiss the girl, and Trina tasted as hot and sweet as she had in the car.

“How do you feel now?”

Trina blinked dreamily. “I feel nice. The hypnotherapists said I don’ t have any emotional scarring that they could find.” She rested her head against Laney’s. “You saved me from the vampires before they could take my blood or my mind.”

Laney stroked her shoulder and ran the hand to her breast, only a little surprised at imagining herself stopping, letting the vampires have their way with Trina, and seeing Trina’s eyes go from accusing to empty as she succumbed. Trina would be such a succulent victim.

“Did the hypnotherapists tell you anything else?” Laney tried to keep the arousal out of her voice picturing Trina lying spellbound under a blinking light. “Did they tell you to be relaxed?”

Trina smiled as though she were suddenly much older, and stared deeply into Laney’s eyes. “I’m relaxed for the same reason you are, Laney.” She smiled to see Laney accept it without knowing why.

Laney clung to her now. “I need to see Meg. My friend. She’s here.”

Trina nodded and rose, and Laney felt relieved that she wanted to come along. It would be lonely, walking away afterward, and Laney was wondering if it wouldn’t end up being lonely even when she was with Meg.

Meg was curled up again, thought it looked like she’d eaten. Someone had picked at the tray, anyway. Laney wondered if someone else, like the hostile medic on the other shift, was eating her food.

Laney was almost sorry to wake her, but couldn’t hold back from touching her. Meg still felt cool and limp. She wondered if they’d hypnotized her friend after all, or even just drugged her, but Meg seemed to sleep the disorderly sleep of exhaustion.

Laney sat against her thighs and lightly stroked her back, then leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Trina stood by the bed, looking at Laney with concern. Laney wanted to explain, but Meg stirred and woke. She tried to speak but only managed a low whimpering sound, and turned away from that herself.

Laney reached down and coaxed her off the pillow again, whispering softly. “It’s OK, Meg. I’m here again.

“Has anyone been to see you?”

For a moment there was nothing, and then Meg’s head moved gently against her breasts, back and forth. “Nurses,” Meg amended a moment later, barely audible.

Laney thought about the people that worked at this end of the medical unit, and felt cold. Tending from people like that could be worse than neglect, even if they didn’t abuse her.

Meg lay back in her arms, looking back up at her with shallow, spent eyes like an animal’s. She glanced once at Trina and then away.

Laney wrinkled her nose. Meg’s scent was heavy. There was fear, sweat she recalled from training. She could smell arousal, too. Meg’s nightmares of vampire slavery were turning her on. Laney knew she’d smell it on Meg’s fingers, and now she knew she’d sensed musk on Meg’s lips, too.

Maybe Meg could read that on her face, but Meg seemed beyond caring.

“Let’s get you clean,” she said, and pulled Meg to sit up. Meg didn’t resist but didn’t help, either. Then Trina was on the other side of her, gently helping her up, and they got Meg to her feet. She stood steadily enough and looked at Laney. It hurt to see the tall blonde so dazed and uncertain—and beaten down. She wanted to get her released—Meg would be better off in a billet, even a dorm, than “recovering” here in solitude.

But she stayed with the immediate goal, and pulled Meg along, smiling at her as she let Laney lead her. There was a shower room off this suite of cubicles. Laney left Meg with Trina next to her in case she was less steady than she looked, and stripped down to her underwear. Then she shrugged and decided to lose that, too, and went over to start the water. She smiled at Trina and turned to undress Meg, who looked at her and blinked.

Meg’s body was as magnificent as ever, strong and curved and smooth, and Laney felt her new appreciation for that start her getting excited all over. But for now, even more than the desire to kneel and start adoring Meg at her natural-blonde muff, she wanted to hold her close and protect her.

All she did was take her hand and lead her to the water, reaching first with her free hand to find it pleasantly hot before exposing Meg to it. They stood under it and Meg finally responded, closing her eyes and leaning back to let the spray have her. Laney enjoyed how the water felt and how her friend looked. They just stood in the warmth.

Someone touched her hand and she saw Trina, nude and wet, smiling and holding a washcloth for her. Wordlessly they started to wash Meg together as she stood there. Laney lost herself along Meg’s thigh but she looked up to see Trina tenderly soaping and wiping her back, and felt Meg tremble at their touch. Trina closed her eyes and leaned in to kiss Meg very lightly on her shoulder.

Laney rose. She stopped resisting it and slid up Meg’s body to stand nested with her. She saw the marks the vampire had put on Meg’s throat, and leaned up to kiss them, feeling them with her tongue. Meg bucked against her but slowly, languidly, like one dreaming. She felt Trina steady them both, but forgot the fox-haired girl as Meg writhed slowly against her, helpless again as Laney probed her wounds and awakened the slavelust.

At last Laney realized what she was doing to Meg. By now her hand was at Meg’s crotch, and she felt Meg’s need, hotter than the water that robed them. Deliberately she shifted her lips to Meg’s and kissed her like a human lover, and felt Meg’s moan vibrate her own tongue. When Meg came, Laney swallowed that cry, too, and lifted her hand to hold Meg tightly.

When she freed Meg’s mouth she courted her ear instead, and murmured “I love you” too quietly to be heard through the spray. She leaned back a little and realized Trina had been holding Meg up, and now leaned her head on Meg’s shoulder as the blonde regained her balance.

Meg looked at her, and Laney’s throat tightened to see the awareness there in her eyes at last. Meg smiled, and lifted her hand to run it lightly through Laney’s wet hair. Laney smiled and caught Trina’s eye, and turned to hold Meg, shifting so Meg could lean back. Meg did, compliantly, and Trina washed her hair, sluicing the water through it. Laney felt her crotch nest with Meg’s and held her closer, kissing her now and then on her jaw until Trina was done. They eased Meg to stand again.

She looked at Laney, and then Laney saw her face falter as Meg’s gaze sank deeper into her. Meg swallowed, and lifted a hand to touch the bite on her throat without seeming to know it.

Meg had always been able to read her like a book. Now Meg seemed to wish she could turn the page back.

“Laney,” she said, her voice almost lost in the rush of the shower. “Oh, Laney.

“Dear god.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh god. What have you . . . done?”

Laney felt a chill but found she could meet Meg’s stare and smile. “What do you mean, Sweet Cheeks?”

Meg swayed a bit. “I can feel it—something in you. Because of this.” She moved a finger near the bite. She was careful not to stroke it, but she wanted to. Laney’s pussy felt Meg’s heat with the need to. “You’ve been . . .”

Laney felt something tighten and then loosen in her head. She stared back into Meg’s eyes and found her own gaze had a strange weight. It didn’t seem odd that Meg’s stare was growing fixed, that her body in Laney’s arms was stiffening.

“Relax, Meg. You feel happy and loved. You are not aware of anything but my eyes and my voice. You have no desire to think there is anything odd about my behavior.”

“I have no desire to think there is anything odd about your behavior.” Meg’s whisper was hesitant but very submissive. Her eyes were wide and her blinking had stopped.

“You will not remember suspecting there is anything about me that disturbs you.”

“I will not remember suspecting there is anything about you that disturbs me.” As she heard the sleepy response, Laney jerked against Meg, not climaxing but close to it with the sticky high of mesmerizing her friend. Meg was too deep in trance to notice.

“Whenever you begin to think of this, you will stop thinking and remember only coming in my arms.”

“Whenever I begin to think of this, I will stop thinking,” Meg whispered. A tear flowed unfelt down her cheek. “And remember only coming in your arms.”

“Wake at my kiss. Remember and obey.”

Laney’s universe expanded from the wonder of Meg’s tongue and they stood there, blinking. Laney wondered what had happened since she’d given Meg that orgasm and kissed her, but a look at Meg’s face told her Meg was even less coherent.

She held her. It was worth a little sex-amnesia to see that smile on Meg’s face, and to know she’d put it there.

The towel was around her before she realized the water was off. Trina, still dripping, was starting to dry both of them off, at least as much of them as their tight embrace let her reach. Laney got the other end of the towel and they both patted Meg down, and Trina fetched more so they could take turns on each other.

As they led her back from the shower Meg was sleepy again, but it seemed like the sort she might actually get rest from. Laney found her some clean shorts and a T-shirt from the closet in her cubicle. Soon Meg was dressed and lying down, and her eyes were closed.

Waiting until her breathing slowed, Laney kissed her and managed to be a few steps away from the bed before it caught up with her and she stopped, trying to swallow the crying. Trina was against her then, saying nothing for a moment.

Then, moving her hand down Laney’s back, she whispered, “Thank you. For letting me.”

19.

Laney moved down the cafeteria line, not questioning why she felt unbothered by all the Guard around her. She still glanced at tables, wondering which ones had seen wagers about her and Meg, but it didn’t have the edge she’d recalled from before.

She didn’t, on the other hand, recall much from her impulsive trip out into the vampire zone, so she couldn’t tell if it were that, and rescuing Trina, that made her feel calmer.

She didn’t worry about it. She just enjoyed how easy it was to focus on the food and how it smelled. One thing the Guard did right was feed you.

It was when she turned away with her tray that she remembered she was not only the new kid but also the goat, and she wondered if they’d let her take the tray somewhere. Like Sherry’s quarters.

“Um—hi. You want to—?”

She turned and nearly dropped the tray. It was the woman from the corridor, the one she’d kept pinned until Mistress could gaze her into submission. She already had her mouth open to remind Laney but saw in Laney’s eyes there was no need. “I usually sit over here,” she said instead, and Laney followed her to a small table by the wall.

Laney looked at her across it after they sat. “You’re OK,” she said, eventually. “They told me you were, but—” but they fucking lied about other things.

“Oh. Yes.” The woman looked down at her food and did precise things with the napkin and flatware. She was so—clerical. Laney felt even worse for bringing her that close to everything.

“I’m Kris, by the way.”

“Kris. I’m Laney.”

Kris nodded without looking up. “They got the, ah, can away from me before I could do anything. I’m not even sure I could have found . . .” She stopped and put both hands on the table.

“Matches.” She swallowed and relaxed. “Or w-whatever. The way I was thinking. I wanted you to know I was . . .”

She looked up. “Actually, I needed to talk to you. I’m sorry, it’s selfish, it’s—”

“It’s not,” Laney said, feeling the other woman’s embarrassment spilling onto her. “I’m just really glad someone will talk to me.”

Kris looked at her and smiled very slightly. So—this is the really uncool pariah-kids’ table, then? she seemed not quite able to say.

“You may not want to,” she did say. “You may not want to think about it, about being controlled. I don’t want to, but I keep doing it. Thinking. About it.”

Laney looked at her, and heard her voice catch, though Kris spoke so quietly it was barely there.

“Kris, you really wanted to do it, didn’t you? That thing it put into your mind?” She knew there were people around, but they seemed to have ignored her once Kris talked to her. She could talk with the other woman about this in their midst and they wouldn’t know.

Kris nodded, quietly ashamed but already used to it.

Laney looked into her eyes. “I know.” She swallowed. “After one of them’s controlled you, it doesn’t go all the way away.

“I play with myself when I think about it.”

Kris dipped her head, and actually ate a little before she lifted her eyes back to face Laney.

“They hypnotized me afterward and I must have told them.” She ate again. “So there are people here who know how much I liked it. How it made me feel. Maybe just the therapist and the debriefer, but they know.

“It’s not like I can talk to them. About it.” She paused but didn’t eat. “I tried to tell my boyfriend. I knew I couldn’t mention details, like the, ah, the gas can, but even just saying it had done that to me, put me under a spell.” She blinked. “I guess I knew it might turn him on, and I knew I couldn’t take that. So there was no one to tell, about it.

“About how very—unbearably—hot it made me to know it was using me. Perverting me.” She looked astonished. “How much I hated them for taking the gas away from me before I could . . .”

Hands flat on the table again. “Obey her. It. Before I could obey it.”

Laney reached and covered a hand with her own. “I obeyed it too. I shot at Guard for it. I know.”

I held you down while it mindtwisted you into wanting to die in flames for it. Doing that because it told me to felt better than sex. I know.

She let Kris see that, too, in her eyes.

“You can talk to me. Anytime, Kris.” They looked at each other, and then they ate, not needing to speak anymore.

Kris agreed to come with her to Sherry’s quarters, afterward. Laney thought about explaining that she’d found a way to turn her new, same-sex submissive needs into a relationship, but she was confused by the heat of imagining Kris letting it seduce her, too. It was sinful fun to think of recruiting for Sherry a harem of newly gay, vampire-tamed concubines, but Laney wasn’t so drunk on the idea that she forgot Kris might not be into that at all. She just explained Sherry was generous with her space, for a Hunter-Fifth who had none of her own to retreat to.

Laney didn’t feel too odd inviting someone along, and Sherry’s approval as they entered cleansed her doubts. As she explained who Kris was, and Kris provided more details, she watched Sherry. Sherry’s warmth covered Kris and started to melt the quiet woman where she stood, but Laney could see something darker and watchful underneath it. Kris seemed to sense it, and her talk about her job overseeing electronic hardware in Sector trailed off.

Sherry’s eyes met hers and Laney got wet. Sherry knew that she knew, and that she’d just stand and watch Sherry do it. Sherry liked that.

“Kris, did you attend the security training? Watch the presentation as instructed?”

“Yes. It was—”

“Think back, now. When you looked at the black and white spiral, did it spin the same way as the one with the colors?”

Kris froze and her mouth opened slightly. “I will never be able to answer that,” she said in a dull voice. “Because whenever I see them they spin together and my mind is too weak to follow it.”

As the familiar wave of obedience drowned her willpower again, laney relaxed and enjoyed watching the other slave use the sabotaged CD’s commands to turn Kris into a puppet. The triggers were already embedded in Kris’ mind as she’d sat like a good little Guard yesterday. She was helpless to resist them now as sherry converted another human to her Queen’s service.

Kris kept speaking. “My mind is very receptive. I am very suggestible now.”

sherry smiled. “Yes, you are. You are also very obedient and will be able to carry out commands later, without even knowing that you’re obeying.”

“I’m very obedient,” Kris whispered. “Obedient . . .”

laney wanted to strip the entranced woman and go down on her as she stood blankly. Kris seemed to have fallen so deep, so easily, that her cunt would not even be juicing. laney would have to lick it, long slow strokes, wondering when the tonguelove would reach Kris’ sleeping mind.

But watching sherry reprogram her was so much better.