“Who’s this Danielle chick you keep talking to?” I ask in a voice that I’ve yet to realize isn’t the one I was born with.

“Why, you are, of course. Who else would we be talking to, love?” Carmilla answers. I stop sucking on the third pouch of blood about half way through it and can only stare wide eyed at the two of them while holding the pouch in my hands like a precious toy that’s been broken. I look back down to my chest again, and sure enough, I wasn’t hallucinating a moment ago. I do indeed have boobs hanging from my chest. I reach up and grab one, causing me to blink a few times and twitch involuntarily.

This time, when I tried, I actually did manage to scream. And both Carmilla and Josephine swear up and down that they saw the blood in my pouch curdle a little bit when I did. Like I’ve said before, I’m not exactly very quick on the up take when I’m first waking up.

Strangely, that scream felt rather cathartic for some weird reason. If I’d have known screaming like that felt so good, I’d have done it a lot more often before now. But it still didn’t change me back into a guy, or a human anything for that matter, so it was just a waste of breath. Sullenly, I looked back down at my pouch-o-blood and proceeded to finish it off.

I was certain that I was dreaming now. Someone slipped something into whatever it was that I was drinking at The Guardian. Then I remembered that I never did get anything to drink except for whatever it was that Carmilla gave me in that back room.

“What happened to me?” I asked in a demure voice that belayed none of the turmoil going on inside of me.

“I have given you new life, my daughter.” Carmilla answered with a soft smile.

“Michael is dead now, dear one. You are now Danielle, a vampire of my creation. Welcome to the fold.” Her companion said to me. “My name is Josephine. I will be in charge of getting you used to the new you. There are a few things you need to be made aware of before we can just let you loose on the town.

She went on to explain about the Blood Lust and a few other things to watch out for, like the sunlight thing. Once she was finished reading the Encarta Encyloped... excuse me, explaining the things that could and couldn’t do in Ravencrest, she draped a robe over my bare shoulders. The sensations it caused brought a small squeaked ‘eep’ out of my mouth and made me involuntarily flinch. This brought a small smirk to Josephine’s lips.

“The sensitivity of your new skin may be a bit of a shock, darling, but you will get used to it eventually.”

I put the now empty packet of blood down on the table and leaned forward to undo the leg restraints so that I could get off the table and stretch my legs a bit. This would turn out to almost be a mistake. I almost fell flat on my rear end the moment I let go of the table. I hadn’t even considered that my balance point and center of gravity had changed when the rest of me did. I quickly grabbed for the table and steadied myself, much to the amusement of Josephine and Carmilla.

“Just let your body do what it naturally wants and you won’t have to worry about it, child.” Carmilla told me from around her hand, which she was using to try and hide a slight giggle. “I’ve given your body the knowledge it needs to blend in, just go with it and you will be just fine, I promise.”

I took her word at it and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t right. Not only about the walking thing, but about being a vampire and a woman in general as well, as I would find in the years to come.

A few days later and I was hating myself for what I had gotten myself into. I was chained up to that same bed again. My mentor, a beautiful vampiress that introduced herself as Darcille, had chained me back up to the same bed I was on when I first woke up as a vampire. The reason? Apparently, I was having troubles overcoming the Bloodlust.

“Until you can wake up without trying to go for a neck, I can’t stop your punishment.” She told me with a look of pain on her face that I was sure was faked. “You know this, so why are you trying to plead with me about it.”

I didn’t even bother responding to that. Was I being immature? Not at all, I had all but lost my mind to the Bloodlust, so I wasn’t exactly in control of my actions at the time. The only thing I had experienced that was even close to the lack of control over myself that I had felt was what Carmilla did to me the night I was converted. I was still struggling against the chains for all I was worth and it was getting me nowhere. I’d have told her that I was only trying to get to the fridge in the corner, which was where the blood pouches were, but I’d shouted my throat raw already and I was having too hard a time trying to talk. Eventually, I just wore myself out too much to struggle anymore.

“That’s better. For stopping your struggles, I will get you what you wanted.” She told me as she skipped over to the fridge and got me one of the pouches. She tore a corner off and slowly fed it to me. As I drank, my throat slowly began to feel better and I found that not only was my strength returning, but so was my sanity. I’m not sure how bad it was, but I’m sure my face went red with shame.

“Don’t worry about it Danielle, it happens to all of us when we first converted. I’ll tell ya what.” She told me with a curious look on her face. “Mother tells me that you had a voice on you that could make a woman weak in all the right places. Why don’t you try singing now? See if you still got it.”

I laid right where I was while I pondered what to sing, or even if I wanted to. This Darcille was almost to bubbly for her head to be screwed on straight and I wasn’t sure if I liked her or not. I had to be around her, though, as it seemed that she was supposed to be my ‘mentor.’ Suddenly, the words to a song I had heard a time or two on the radio came to my mind, and they just seemed to fit with what had happened to me in the last few months. So I hummed a few warm up scales, to prep my vocal chords.

“Follow me into the desert, as thirsty as you are. Crack a smile and cut your mouth and drown in alcohol.” I sang. I remembered the whole song, surprisingly enough, and I remembered how impressed I was by the power in the singer’s voice. For some reason I felt that I had to match that, so I sang out as powerfully as I could, hoping to mimic the power in that scream that had torn its way out of my lungs that first night I woke up as a female and a vampire. By the look on Darcille’s face, I don’t think I was that far off. I can’t even begin to describe how pleased I was by that. “’Cause down below the Truth is lying beneath the riverbed. So quench yourself and drink the water that flows below her head.”

“Girl.” She said, causing me to cringe involuntarily. “If you sang even half as well as you just did as a man, then I can’t blame our mother for wanting you the way she did. Hell, I’d have dropped my panties too.”

This made me blush all the way down to my new breasts. I’m sure of it, even if I’ve never actually looked into a mirror to see them from the front yet. Not that I haven’t been curious about what I look like, mind you. I’ve never been offered the opportunity yet and I wasn’t about to go asking. I figured that I’d get to see me soon enough.

I hadn’t even the foggiest idea how long I’d been chained up. Being confined to a room with no windows and no clock or calendar tends to do that to a person, and apparently the dead were not immune to it either. All I knew is that A.] it felt like I’d been locked up for, like, fifty kabrillion years or something (Wait, did I just use the term “like”? No, I refuse to go there) and B.] I was *really* hungry. Where was a neck when I needed one? Hell, I was so hungry, a wrist or a thigh would do.

Yesterday had been the worst punishment for me yet. When Darcille had woken up, she had seen me chewing on the corner of the door on the mini fridge trying to get into it. She didn’t label me a deviant because I had the right idea, but she did punish me for allowing myself to be so consumed that I forgot how to use a door.

It wasn’t all bad for me, however, as this served to help me in two ways. Firstly, it showed me that we as vampires can cure minor cuts with our saliva. It also served to help me actually beat this damnable Bloodlust at last. But before I could get too smug, Darcille had chained me by my wrists to the floor. This left me nowhere near enough slack in the leash to reach the fridge. But that didn’t matter to me. I now had a plan.

the next morning

It was priceless, I’m telling ya! There she was, mouth agape like a fish out of water. And there I was, happily sipping away at one of the pouches the morning after she had all but bound me to the floor. I don’t know what about it she was the most surprised about, but she went completely slack jawed at the sight of me, almost completely out of my restraints and merrily sipping away at a juice pouch of blood. Are you confused yet? Excellent! Now, let me explain how I got here.

The previous night, I had dislocated the joints in my thumbs and slipped the restraints off my wrists after curling up to sleep in such a manner that Darcille’s line of sight was blocked. Next, after pretending to fall asleep and waiting until well after she had nodded off, I carefully made my way over to the fridge and turned it so that the door would open away from her. After that, I reached inside and pulled out the piece of the door that had come off in my mouth the previous morning.

Now, I had been told that our hearts did not pump blood the way that a human heart does, so it wouldn’t do me any good to bite one of my sisters’ necks for food. Figuring that we did still have blood, I used the piece of the door to slit the bottom of my foot and gravity became my new best friend. I used the little bit of blood that came out to write a message on the door of the fridge that read: “FREE NECK INSIDE!!!” before spitting on my hand and sealing the slit back up.

I then used my make-shift shank to put a small hole in the top of one of the pouches, thinking that the smell would attract me in the morning as I had been usually waking up earlier that Darcille. Turns out I was right on all counts and it worked beautifully. The question now was if it was good enough to get me past this training from hell phase that all of the girls apparently have to go through.

Obviously, I had left Darcille speechless. But if that was a good sign or not, I didn’t know.

“I... Um.... Don’t really know what to say to this one. I don’t think any of us has ever done anything quite like this before.” She eventually told me. “Tell ya what, just stay put and I’ll be right back. I need to talk to our mother about what I’m supposed to do here.”

Uh oh. I could be the only one to have done something like this? While I felt a small part of myself beaming with pride for being resourceful, the majority of me was worried about the implications of this. Who the hell was going to get out of here if it came down to it?

I gave Darcille a nod in the affirmative and continued sipping on my pouch like I didn’t have a care in the world and she left without a noticeable second thought. The moment that door was closed though, I put the pouch down for a moment to take stock of my surroundings once more. And nothing helpful jumped out at me. I then re-examined my shackles and... found no way out of them.

Then, like a bolt of lightning from the clear blue, an idea came to me. It would be risky, and fatal, if it didn’t work because I would only have one shot at it, if things went south when Darcille came back with Carmilla.

I grabbed my pouch of blood and moved so that the chain was stretched taunt. Then I brought it back about three inches and, using a little bit of the blood, I put a bloody finger print on the floor. I repeated the process so that I had an arc of finger prints spaced about four feet apart on the floor, making it look like I had marked the boundaries of my reach while the shackle was still attached to my ankle.

Once all of this was done, I went back to where I had been before and re positioned the chain so that I was sitting on it. I’m certain that they knew just how long it was, but I was hoping that they might mistake it’s length if they couldn’t see it. With the stage set, it was time to wait on the rest of the cast to arrive.

Acting, you see, is just like being a stage magician. If an illusion is to be believed, then the lie has to be believable. At least, that’s what Mr. Thulman taught us is in his acting classes. I’d seen the man do his thing before, and I’m inclined to believe him as the man really knew how to put on a convincing show. When we studied the “Improv” method of acting, he had us believing that he was a crack addict from Miami, Florida by the end of the class.

Again, thus why I only detracted three inches from its overall length as far as the marking went. And speaking of acting, in walked the last two cast members right on cue. The instant that door began to open, I rearranged my face to one of innocent worry instead of one ready to do just about anything to defend him... wait, HERself (at least, now I was a she and not a he, anyway. I’m still trying to get used to that thought).

Mistress, as Carmilla told me to refer to her, and Darcille walked into the room following Mistress, who stopped about two feet from where the arc was on the floor. She took a look at that, took a look at me, sitting on the chain to the shackle, then to the note on the fridge, then back to me, then to Darcille. The look on her face said that she wasn’t very amused about something and I’m guessing that it was me. When I looked closer, however, there was an amused twinkle in her eye that was barely noticeable.

“I’m not entirely sure whether I should be insulted and offended that you even thought you could kill me in a bid for freedom, ‘If it came down to it,’ amused by your stunt with that note on the door there.” She quoted my thoughts verbatim as she walked (more like glided) over to where I still sat. I have to admit, this lady just scared the bejesus out of me with that one.

“Or if I should be impressed with how efficient and well thought out both of these plans of yours were. Believe me when I say that you are very far from the first daughter I have made, Danielle. Young Darcy here was turned in the sixties and I myself was turned during the early stages of the French Revolution. That I am even considering being impressed should say something positive to you, darling.” She said this last with a slight chuckle.

I’m dead positive that the chuckle was at the combination of faces that I involuntarily made at these revelations. These ranged from shock that she could apparently read my mind to confusion at just how old she was. She only looked to be twenty years old at the oldest. I had thought she was about seventeen or eighteen the night she turned me, for cripes’ sake!

“If you can repeat this feat tomorrow morning, without the note this time.” She said with the emphasis on the part about the note as she reached down and tilted my head up with a fingertip. “Then you will be done with this phase of your training and ready to move on to the next.”

When I looked up into her eyes, I saw a small, almost motherly smile on her lips. I say motherly because it reminded me of the smile my, wait... Michael’s mother had when she was amused at how he had broken the rules of the house.

“But if you ever try, or even plan to try and fight me like that again, I will end you. Are we clear, daughter?” She said without losing the smile, but the twinkle was gone from her eyes, replaced with a cold look that I hoped to never see again.

The next day I managed to pull it off without the note. I was almost bubbling over with excitement at what I had accomplished until I realized that I had been duped. I must not have hidden my disappointment at not realizing it sooner quickly enough, though.

“What’s with the face, Dani? I thought you’d be happy to be progressing with this thing.” She asked me with a look of mild confusion on her features.

“I can’t help but feel like this whole thing is one giant ‘Carrot and Stick’ method of our ‘mothers’ getting us to do what they want.” I explained to her. And it really did, to me at least.

“Naw, now you’re just being paranoid. You should be happy that it only took you six days to complete this phase, it took me two weeks! Now come on and get this robe on.” She said as she handed me the robe in question and blushed a deep scarlet at her admission. “ I gotta take you to your new room and introduce you to your room mate.”

After helping me to my feet and removing my bindings, she helped me into the robe, which looked and felt like a bath robe. I couldn’t believe just how soft it felt against my skin. Anyway, she led me out of the door and down a few halls and corridors until we passed through what appeared to be the oldest part of the building’s basement. This came, naturally, as a surprise to me, as I hadn’t really given much thought to where I was other than ‘in a room somewhere.’
“Um...” Where are we? I meant to ask her, but I had a hard time forming the words.

“Oh, I guess this is all pretty new for you, isn’t it? In case you can’t tell, we were in one of the sub-basement levels under the sorority house. As far as I know, we mostly use them for storage, but some of them are used for other things. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?” She offered in explanation.

“Oh.” I oh so intelligently responded. Her explanation made an odd kind of sense at that.

“Well, now that that is out of the way, we’re walking, we’re walking...” She said as she gently took my arm and guided me further up into the house. I was still a bit too surprised about being so close to my apartment to even offer resistance. It was around this point that a thought struck me.

Roommate? Huh? I thought.

We walked down more than a few more corridors until we stopped in front of an unassuming door.

“Here we are. Let’s go on in, she won’t mind, trust me.” She said this last to me when she saw my look of mild apprehension at just waltzing on in unannounced.

“Uh... Okay?” I answered as she opened the door and all but pranced right on in.

The room was pretty basic, as far as layouts go. There were two vanities that were on opposite walls from each other and a bunk bed in the corner of the back wall. That’s it. No coffins leaning against the wall in the corner, no religious symbols scrawled in blood on the walls, ceiling, or the floor (which was covered in a burgundy colored carpet, though), no creepy chandlers with human skulls on them. All in all, it was kind of anticlimactic.

I walked in after her and she somehow had gotten behind me and stepped towards me from behind the door as she closed it.

“Well, hello there stranger, I hope we can get along. My name is Darcille, but you can call me Darcy, and I’ll be your new roommate.” She said with a truly sunny smile like nothing strange had happened. To be honest, I would have probably let loose a second blood curdling scream if I hadn’t been too busy hyperventilating.

“Whoa there, girlie, just calm down.” She told me when she saw my reaction. “I don’t bite. Well, at least I don’t bite my sisters when they tell me not to.”

It took me a moment to calm back down again. I don’t know what was going on with me, but I seemed to be jumpier now that I wasn’t Michael anymore. Maybe it was just being in a situation that I was uncomfortable with. But that left too many variables open.

Was it being a woman after spending over two decades, the first ones actually, or was it that I wasn’t even human anymore? Maybe it was all of it at once, mixed with the fact that I was still thinking of myself as a human male. The other thing that was confusing me was that I was never this analytical before the conversion. Maybe they really had changed my brain when they changed the rest of me. If I’m honest with myself, that was a thought that really scared me.

“You okay there, Dani?” Darcy asked, bring me back out of my thoughts.

“Wha... Yeah. I’m fine. Just thinking about things is all.” I told her. Which was the truth, even if I didn’t tell her what I was thinking and worrying about.

“Oh, okay.” She said. “I’m just trying to make sure that you’re okay. I’d be more than happy to listen if you need someone to talk to, you know.”

And whaddya know, I actually felt somewhat better about that. I didn’t know if I could trust her or not, but the fact that I didn’t really have any friends since my move here to Ravencrest and Jimmy’s death. It might actually be nice to have a friend and not feel so lonely anymore.

“Sure, okay. I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.” I told her in spite of my reservations about trusting any of these vampires just yet. If her smile was anything to go by, then she was pleased with my answer. Like I said, too many things I didn’t know about them, and too many things that could end up being very bad for me. However, it might be in my best interest to at least act like I’m wanting to fit in. There is a reason that they say that the nail that sticks out is the first to feel the hammer drop. If my creator was anything to go by, that hammer looked particularly painful and very unforgiving.

*****Author's note.

Thank you to EoF for creating this wonderful place to let my muse play and to Dustin, Maggie, and EoF for beta reading and editing work. I hope you have enjoyed my latest offering! The next chapter is already being worked on, it shouldnt take me as long to get it done this time *blush*. Also, the song in this chapter is done by Soundgarden and is called Burden in my Hand. I claim nothing about the song or the video other than that I like the both of them and that I'm making no money off of this.

Thanks again and as always, have a nice read. ^_^