Strain V

                                        I.

Standing quite some distance above the black, turbulent waters below, Miles Scott had never been more aware of the genuine fragility of his own life. But despite this particular awareness as he teetered upon the edge of a precipice of life-threatening proportions, he felt strangely calm.

The city, now that the night was here, was dead quiet and hauntingly still. The chill wind surrounded him as he stood up there on the Washington Bridge, and he felt as if he were naked in the cold darkness, though he was as clothed as any of the other people out walking the streets.

The realisation that life was as vulnerable as it was in the great scheme of things was peculiarly similar to that initial moment after he had first heard of his twin sister's death.

That moment had been most peculiar because of its extreme calmness. Before the detonation of loss had caused raw and unyielding pain to surge through his muscles, vessels and nerves like the all-powerful shockwave tearing through the matchstick buildings devastated by an atomic bomb, he had actually taken the news quite calmly.

Calm, so calm - just as he felt now, teetering on the edge of oblivion, in perfect balance between rolling onto the paving slabs to his left and plummeting to the watery end to his right – to become just another fallen nocturnal pedestrian or just another statistic for the coroner’s office.

There were no friends to hold him back from the edge now: he’d never been especially popular, what with his dedication to a solitary sport, but his second year of college had turned him into a stranger to all. College had a cruel way of isolating those caught out of the social loop, and now at the beginning of his third year, his last refuge from loneliness was gone: his beloved twin sister had been plucked from this Earth without mercy, to leave him the only survivor of a truly tragic family.

Though the loss of his parents had been lost in the faded memory of his first few years, Sophie’s end had been a cruel, cruel blow. Cutting short a second year of college spent abroad on exchange to Japan, he had felt her death physically, mentally and spiritually, with a trauma that no grieving non-twin would understand.

Life was not worth living with this pain. No one in the world cared that he was alive, now, and he would never see the beautiful, innocent, kind face of his sister again. Everything around him was pain and darkness.

And just the smallest of steps would end it all.

He’d leave behind nothing much of any significance, his name in a few old high school yearbooks, on a number of martial arts tournament trophies, his image fading quickly from those he had thought were his friends.

Behind him, now, the still air was disturbed by the sound of other people. His thoughts reeled away from that brutal edge: Miles felt suddenly ashamed, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. If life mattered so little to him now, why should he be embarrassed at anyone witnessing the end of it all? But nevertheless, he did feel ashamed, perhaps deep down he was admitting to himself that it was the weak way, the coward’s way of dealing with hardship, but whatever, he turned back from the darkness towards the orange light flooding from the streetlamps, looking towards the source of the noise, intending to wait until the people had passed, and resort to his drastic solution soon afterwards.

The group of them seemed like fairly ordinary young people, night clubbers, college students most likely out on the streets after a boozy night in some dark dance venue down town. They were dressed fairly normally for that kind of crowd: the four men in dark trousers and coloured shirts, the lone female in a suggestively scanty skin-tight pink crop top revealing a wincingly trim midriff and below, a dark miniskirt hiding not much more of her below waist level.

At first he stood back and thought how lucky they all were, having fun together, far away from worries or solitude. But as they came closer, he saw that they were not laughing together, and they were not casually ambling along like most boozy college students following a night in a club.

As they came closer, Miles saw that they were running, with the four males in clear pursuit of the frantic female, the male laughter that of menacing threat rather than humorous frolic. The pretty blonde was clearly afraid, and running without shoes just out of reach of the pursuing men. Trouble, fear, desperation. It shocked Miles that such a thing could happen, so much so that he froze there where he stood, unable to move as the men caught up with her, pulling her down to the ground so that he could see repeated flashes of white underwear that was disturbingly thrilling to him despite the circumstances.

After that momentary pause, however, Miles found himself suddenly leaping down from his perilous promontory, his body seeming to act on some strange kind of autopilot – so much so that it appeared he was merely a first-person witness to his own body sprinting across the empty roadway at blistering pace to tear into the four attackers.

He watched as the years of theoretical, hypothetical combat suddenly clicked into a suddenly real context, those clever, gymnastic moves suddenly no longer about points or displays to impress the judges, but about using his body as a fulcrum to land cruelly perfect and grisly powerful blows on the four assailants who had the real intention to inflict harm on the girl.

How he managed to follow his various teachers’ words of advice to keep rage and fury from taking hold of his mind he would never know, but his chops, thrusts, jabs and roaring kicks were delivered in coolly calculated purpose, vigorously and without mercy but free from the red mist of anger.

The four fought for a while, hardly landing a blow on him, though he clearly landed the blows on them for blood was being shed. He tasted the red tang of iron in his mouth, and then saw the crimson fluid dripping down his opponents’ faces – but he knew for a fact none of it was his.

As their cries rang out and the hideous crack of broken bones split the air a few times, the four of them withdrew, backing off then turning to run, belting away with limps and groans to gamble that he was likely to stop and check on the girl rather than get involved in any serious pursuit.

                                        II.

“Are you all right? Miss?” he said in barely more than a whisper as he watched the murderous youths fleeing into the night.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice quivering a little from either fear or nerves, but with a distinct edge to it as though she felt embarrassed that the four men had got the better of her, as though she felt she really ought to have coped with it all on her own, despite there being four men against her lonesome. “Thank you,” she said much more softly now, looking up at him with a vulnerable smile as she realised her initial tone had seemed less than entirely grateful.

“Glad I could help,” he said, reaching out his hand to pull her up to her feet. She was quite something, though her face was a little bruised.

“They… they ambushed me,” she said bitterly, and the two of them began to wonder slowly in the opposite direction to that the attackers had taken.

“We should get in touch with the police,” Miles said, feeling his mind somehow connecting up with his body once again as the adrenaline subsided within him. “Those guys are dangerous.”

“No,” she said softly with a slight shake of her head. “No police.”

It was an odd thing to say on her part, but Miles wasn’t going to ask her why. She had her own reasons, he was sure, and the little he knew about such things included the knowledge that female victims of violent attacks often purposefully avoided reporting incidents to the police from fear of reprisals, a need to bury the painful experience and not draw it out over a potentially long and distressing court case or a variety of other complex reasons he had no right to get into with this girl walking by his side.

“Are you cold?” he asked her. “Would you like my coat?”

She smiled for the first time then, and her pretty face was lit up by the movement, though it slightly pained her to do so. “Who are you?” she asked, “and where did you learn to fight like that?”

“Oh you know,” he said looking away from her, as his heart sank once more with the remembrance of who he was and what had happened to him. “Here and there.”

“You’re a college boy, huh?” she asked, and then, seeing that he was not looking entirely comfortable with her questioning, laid off him in that direction.

Miles thought her tone slightly strange again: she appeared to be a college girl herself, but she spoke the word ‘college’ as though she were much older and it had been years since she had been in college herself.

“Do you know who those guys were?” she asked him then, and he turned to look at her again, shaking his head as his eyes connected with hers again. “No matter. I can’t believe what you did to them – it’s… it’s unheard of…”

She trailed off then, as though she were saying something she shouldn’t be, revealing something to him that was supposed to remain hidden. For a moment or two, he wondered if the whole thing had been some kind of bizarre stage show to get him away from the bridge and his attempts to end it all in the icy depths of the winter river. But as they did, indeed, leave the stark platform of the bridge, walking now onto the other riverbank from that which he had come, she gripped his arm then and in the limited light of the street lamps gave him a look of genuine gratitude, the kind that could not possibly be staged.

“I really want to thank you,” she said softly.

“You have,” he responded equally quietly, feeling all thought of suicide dispelling from his intent – or at least for now.

“No, I haven’t” she said, and not for the first time that evening he thought her acting a trifle strangely.

“I don’t under – “ he was about to say, then she suddenly pulled him down the riverside steps.

“Come with me. Quickly,” she said, and he had no option but to follow.

What was she doing?

She led him down the stone steps and round, underneath the mighty ceiling provided by the bridge. There was a wall and a seat-like ledge running along the waterside, on which the old men sat in the mid-afternoon and the street sellers used to hawk everything from second hand books to tacky plastic souvenirs on Wednesdays.

“Here, sit,” she said, and as he did so she knelt between his legs quite suddenly.

“Oh no,” he said, “you don’t have to – “

“Shhh!” she said with a finger to her lips. “I want to. I’m going to.”

And she pressed open his legs before tugging at his fly, he could see her pretty face in the half light of the night city and the river, illuminating her elfin-like high cheekbones that made his penis harden almost fully before she even managed to expose it fully, taking it in her soft fingers and applying such irresistible pressure to his shaft.

He couldn’t help but let her do as she clearly wanted, a low groan emitting from his lips as he felt the sudden velvet heat of her mouth enveloping him, her moist tongue sweeping round his cock as it ventured inside her.

The girl – he didn’t even know her name – was incredible. Though a psychiatrist might have said afterwards that it might have had something to do with the extreme low point he had been at just minutes past, but what she was doing with her mouth on his hard cock was the most unbelievably superb sensation he had ever experienced. Sure, he didn’t exactly have the most amount of experience in that area for a guy his age, but even so. As he felt her warm, wet softness coaxing his shaft, her head moving up then down, up then down, it really didn’t seem long until he felt himself beginning to build towards the end.

And how it built. By the time that magnificent orgasm reared its sensational head he was groaning like a madman under that bridge, the electricity of purest ecstasy throbbing through every vein in his body towards that one long, hard erection squeezed between this exquisite girl’s lips.

When his come burbled then coursed out from his cock it felt as though he’d been eating nothing but sugar for a day. She swallowed his semen with loud gulps, and he opened his eyes weakly, his energy seemingly drained along with his cock, to see her sucking up every drop and ravenously slurping up every trace of his emissions, her tongue flicking around the head of his cock as though he were producing her drug of choice.

It was amazing, watching such an attractive young girl paying such intimate attention to him, and whether it was an act or not for his benefit, he couldn’t tell, but she seemed to moan a little herself and her body trembled as his come streamed down her throat.

But then his vision appeared to fail: stars and sparks fizzed over his eyes and the light seemed to fade at the same time as he felt a sudden feverish loss of energy overwhelm him. For a moment, he thought he might even faint: had the orgasm really been that intense? Incredible. His head reeled as though he were badly hung-over and then began to ache slightly.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, as though he’d done her the greatest service just now, not the other way around.

“No, thank you…” he said, but his words were slurred, he found it hard to even move from where he was slumped.

Like a tidy cat, she cleaned up his softening penis one last time with her tongue, before tucking it away inside his pants and re-fastening his fly. As she finished up, he could no nothing but smile weakly, feeling so drained all of a sudden, so tired, but sleepily amazed such an attractive girl had just done what she had just done with him. It had been a fair while since he'd been with anyone - over a year, in fact, since cheerleading Lisa had finished with him rather than wait for him while he went to Japan for a year.

Then, as suddenly as it had all kicked off, the girl was gone, vanished into the night.

                                        III.

Waking up the following morning, Miles still felt a little shaky. Jesus, what had that girl done to him? He'd never known a girl with such a voracious appetite for it - and her appetite had left him drained, even this morning he did not feel fully recovered. Who was she?

It was the morning of the memorial service. Those who wanted to would gather at 11am in the college chapel to remember Sophie - and Miles would have to be there. With a deep breath, he picked himself up out of the warm confines of his bed, resigned to the fact that he could not avoid it. It would be painful, but it was his duty.

He actually didn't feel quite as bad as he had before he'd rescued that girl. Perhaps the rescue had shown him that his place in life wasn't entirely pointless. Perhaps it was just the girl's ravenous attentions on him afterwards that had pulled him out of his self-destructiveness for now. Though Sophie was gone, bless her soul, life was showing him that it would go on nevertheless.

But he did feel so weak - what was that? The fight? Had that taken it all out of him, and he'd only noticed it after the adrenaline had worn off - hence why he'd felt so drained after that incredible orgasm?

He looked at himself in the mirror of his dorm room: his skin seemed pale, his deep brown eyes a little blood-shot - he was a state. And -

"Jesus!" he said aloud.

Some of his hairs had gone grey. When had that happened? He hadn't really looked in the mirror since Sophie had died, he'd had other things more pressing to think about. But he knew for a fact he had had a full head of pure black hair before. But now, a sprinkling of silver hairs was clearly there, interspersed through the sides of his black mane. He looked like a fifty-year-old, for Heaven's sake. What was that about? Was this the effect of Sophie's death on him?

Throwing on some clothes, he locked the door to his dorm-room and headed on out into the autumn sunshine. College life was certainly continuing as normal, but Miles still couldn't help feeling very different. It was nothing to do with his year in Japan - or even the loss of his twin, he felt certain - but he felt peculiarly weak today, physically weak as though he'd contracted some kind of condition. Stepping outside his dorm, the sudden bright daylight hurt his eyes and bearing it for just a few minutes made him turn around one-eighty degrees and return to his room for his sunglasses.

It wasn't particularly sunny, either: the sky was overcast, with brushes of thick grey rushing along in the breeze: how could it be too bright for him? Was he genuinely ill? Wasn't it a symptom of meningitis, being photo-sensitive like this?

Perhaps he was being paranoid. Arriving at the college chapel, a beautiful sleepy old victorian stone building half-covered in ivy, with its tall clock tower forming the centrepiece of the college campus, Miles tried his best to calm himself.

Inside, he was grateful to see a half-decent turn-out: his sister had made a good number of friends in that last year. But he sat up front, a little isolated since he was not really in his sister's social circle. The musty interior of the chapel was soothing to him now, the light was filtered through narrow stain-glass windows, definitely the place for someone feeling sensitive to the sun.

"Miles, isn't it?"

The voice came from behind him - it surprised him a little, made him jump. But he turned to find one of the frat boys Sophie had hung around with - Jake, was that his name?

"Jake," the pale, blond-haired frat boy confirmed. "I was a friend of your sister."

"Hi," he said, shaking the guy's hand tentatively.

"How are you?"

"Oh, you know. Holding up, I suppose."

"We're all a bit in shock, I guess," he said, sounding genuine. "Have the doctors said how she... what happened to her, yet?"

"No. Not yet. Some kind of rare condition, they think. Not genetic, though, they tell me."

"Well, that's something, huh?" Jake gave him a weak smile - it was hard to know how to act in the circumstances, Miles appreciated that. "Well hey," he said, getting up to head back to his friends, a bunch of guys Miles half-recognised sitting across the aisle, "come by the fraternity some time, huh? You're welcome any time, Miles."

They shook hands again, Miles warmed by his genuine concern, and he nodded, indicating that he would be by in the near future.

Those guys sitting there, where Jake was. The burning recognition now came to him: they had been the guys who had been pursuing that girl the other night. Were they frat boys too? They had to be. They were all sitting there in a group. Maybe they hadn't actually been intending to hurt that girl the other night, then. Maybe they had just been frat boys fooling around - had he overreacted? He'd kicked the living shit out of them.

They didn't seem too beaten up: not even a bruise was visible, in fact. The girl had seemed grateful - she'd shown him that much afterwards. So maybe he hadn't overreacted. Or maybe she'd been frightened - maybe she thought he was getting the guys to get to her. That she had to oblige him, because otherwise he could seriously hurt her. Miles felt a little sick at that thought.

Just then, as he stared at him, one of the guys he'd beaten up the previous night winked at him and flashed him a sly grin. Quickly, he turned away. What was that about? It was as if to say the fight hadn't bothered them, they respected him. But he'd broken bones - he remembered the grisly sounds. And he'd tasted blood - their blood.

Maybe he'd won the frat boys' respect by giving them a hiding to nothing. That was the way frat boys worked, after all, wasn't it? That whole primitive survival of the fittest thing, the strongest shall lead?

He turned, now, to see the priest and choir entering. The organist struck up a suitably solemn tune and the service was beginning. As he watched the choir in their red cassocks and white surplices processing slowly up the nave of the chapel, he caught sight of the young blonde girl, who he had rescued from the frat boys.

The sight of her caused him to involuntarily gasp - had she really done that to him afterwards? She was so beautiful. What was she doing there? Had she been a friend of Sophie's?

She was sitting at the very back of the chapel, as far away from the frat boys as she could, on the same pew as another guy, an African-American the same age as her, and a fifty-ish man dressed all in black, with slick-back black hair. She was dressed in a smart suit, as were her pew companions. The suits looked slightly official on them: beyond the normal student get-up, it made them look like federal agents - perhaps left over from an episode of the X-files. Who was she? She didn't look like a student, at least apart from her age.

Turning back, he felt an inappropriate stirring of his cock in his pants - please, not now. This was his sister's memorial service, for Heaven's sake. But it was hard to keep his mind away from what had happened the previous night - damn it, she was so beautiful. Maybe he'd dreamed all of that part of the evening.

"In nomine Christi, amen," said the priest as the robed church people took their places, and the service was begun.

It was a moving and painful hour, in which Miles shed more than a few tears and Sophie's friends paid poignant and touching tribute to the bright, happy girl who had been popular and intelligent. It took his mind off the strange events of the evening before, and was an important part of what psychiatrists might term closure.

When, at last, the service was over and the priest and choir processed back down the nave of the chapel, Miles noticed that the blonde girl - and her two companions - were gone.

                                        IV.

The rest of the day seemed to pass slowly and painfully, like a bad hangover, and despite feeling the need for fresh air and peace, the sunshine genuinely did make him feel ill. So he went back to the dorm, to chill out in his room and watch cable - not exactly a constructive way to pass the time, but better than lectures.

By the time the evening came round, he'd had a lot of time to think, and he had a major question in his head: what if he had been prejudicial in his judgement of the situation that night? What if, somehow, the blonde girl had been the one in the wrong. What if those four had been chasing her away from something, rather than just chasing her for the sake of it?

The possibility that he had got the wrong end of the stick was prominent in his mind, and he hoped that the weakness he felt was not to do with the intimate contact he had had with her afterwards. Could you pass on diseases through oral sex?

After a little supper in the cafeteria, he decided to go and find Jake, and perhaps those guys in the fraternity, to find out exactly what had been going on that night.

Walking over, he felt a little stronger now, his constitution was a little more settled. It helped that the sun had gone down - maybe he had better go to the doctor in the morning - it was not unheard of for meningitis to strike on a college campus, after all.

On the way, for a moment, he thought he caught sight of the blonde girl again - whoever she was - the flash of a reflection in a window. But he turned to find no one there, and decided that he had been mistaken: his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The fraternity - Omega-gamma-alpha - was sited on Madison Street, a residential area near to college in which mostly academic staff lived. It was not known for its jocks, like other fraternity houses were - none of the boys in Omega-gamma-alpha were particularly sporty - but it was one of the 'cool' fraternities, as far as Miles knew. For some reason, the more attractive sorority girls were drawn to it, despite its lack of quarterbacks or tight ends, and that gave it status beyond the trophy cabinets of other college fraternities.

He had never been a part of that scene - even in his first year, he had kept away from it to concentrate on his various tournaments and competitions. His sister must have got involved during the year he'd spent away - maybe it was a reaction to losing him for that year. She'd said nothing about her dealings with them to him on the phone, or by email, but he supposed he'd never asked, after all.

Warily, he climbed the three steps up to the porch, and opened the door.

"Miles! You made it!" he heard Jake's voice before he saw him.

"Yeah," he smiled modestly, "you know, I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about."

"Glad you came," he got up from where he had been lounging on a couch with a few girls and the four hard-cases Miles had rumbled with the night before, and shook Miles by the hand again. "You want a beer?"

"Great," he said, and followed Jake to the kitchen.

"I hear you had a tangle with some of the boys the other night," Jake said as he reached into the fridge and tossed a can of Budweiser at Miles.

"Yeah, I guess I did," Miles replied sheepishly. "I guess I misread the situation: thought this girl was being hassled by those guys, I guess I just made a split decision and - "

"Oh, understandable - the guys figured that was probably what happened," Jake patted him on the shoulder and clicked open his own beer as they wandered back to the front room. "Very gallant, I'd say," he laughed and Miles tentatively did likewise. "Guys," Jake said to the assembled crowd, "this is Miles - Sophie's brother. Miles, Gus, Brad, Finchey and Tommo."

"Hi," Miles held up a palm in greeting.

"No hard feelings, huh boys?"

"Uh-uh!" the four of them smiled as Miles and Jake took up empty armchairs.

Miles noticed that Jake did not introduce any of the girls, which he thought a little strange, but then he wasn't an expert on the array of bizarrely primitive rules by which these fraternities and sororities were run. Perhaps there was some kind of protocol here, whereby the girls - clearly first years - were not of sufficient status to be introduced. It was all a little odd as far as Miles could see, but there you go.

"Who was that girl?" Miles asked, voicing a question that had been circling his mind all day.

"Who knows?" said one of the frat boys - Gus, Miles thought it was. "All I can say, dude, is she tried to stick Tommo here with a god damn needle containing Christ knows what, and that ain't the kinda chick we want around here."

"She tried to inject you with something?" Miles asked the aforementioned Tommo.

Tommo, a big guy who Miles was almost sure should have had a few broken ribs from the previous night, shrugged his shoulders and said: "Fuckin' skunk-whore. Jesus, acted like she had some kind of vendetta going against men. Hey, sorry about your sister, man."

"Thanks," Miles said. These guys seemed all right. Sure, the fraternity system was weird, but the bottom line was, he supposed, these guys didn't invent it. "Hey, you know I think she was at the memorial service today."

"She's been hanging around campus for a while, now - since your sister died - "

But Jake cut Tommo off with a glare. "Sorry, Miles," he said. "I know it must still really hurt to think about your sister."

"It's all right," he said. "Really."

"Look," Jake said, "why don't you go upstairs with a couple of girls, huh? Take your minds off things."

"Well, uh..." Miles looked at the array of girls - all attractive and seeming willing to do as Jake was suggesting.

"You know, if you were to join the fraternity, there'd be a lot of benefits. Make your time at college a lot happier, know what I mean?"

"Join?"

"Sure. It would be the least we could do," Jake smiled warmly. "I mean, I would be like doing Sophie a favour, you know? And you wouldn't have to do the whole initiation thing, like most new recruits."

"Well..." Miles felt conflicted, confused feelings. "That's very kind of you..."

"Hey, think about it. Go have some fun, huh?" Jake signalled, and two girls got up from the couch, indicating for Miles to go with them.

"Uh... right..."

The others gave him the kind of mischievous grins that made him feel at once like he was doing something a little risqué, and also that he was somehow fitting in with a new family, the kind of family he had never really had. Maybe life was worth living after all. People weren't so bad.

The two girls led him upstairs, where an empty room lay two flights up, towards the back of the building. Various sounds of others fooling around could be heard - laughing, loud music, even the sounds of love-making behind closed doors - as he followed the two first year girls through the fraternity building.

He couldn't quite believe that they were going to fool around with him just like that - it was like something out of a dodgy porn film, though the girls were a little more attractive than the usual porn fare, a little more real-looking. Maybe he was just going to get a massage or something.

But there was no massage. Once they got into the room - which belonged to god knew who, but was decorated as might be expected for a college fraternity - the two girls were quickly all over him.

“Wait, wait!” he said.

They obliged him, looking at him as though he were insane for wanting to stop.

“I don’t even know your names,” he said. He wished he’d at least said this before the blonde had dealt with him that last night, but he would start his new leaf now: he wasn’t going to let another girl have her wicked way with him without at least revealing her identity to him.

“I’m Vanessa,” said the brunette, who was probably the more strong-willed of the two from his initial assessment.

“And I’m Jessica,” said the lighter haired girl, whose face was adorned by pale freckles.

“Nice to meet you both,” he said, slightly bemused by the whole situation.

“Are you a virgin?” Vanessa asked, bemusement now in her own voice as the two girls closed in on him, backing him slowly over towards the bed.

“No!” he said – truthfully, too, he was certainly no virgin, but this was another matter entirely to what he had experienced. “I’m just not used to… you know…”

“Two girls at once?” Jessica giggled, and she and Vanessa looked at each other with some kind of secret communication passing between each other.

“Relax,” Vanessa purred, caressing his rapidly hardening cock through his pants as she and Jessica pressed themselves against him. Then they seemed to veer away from him, and as coolly wrapped an arm around Jessica, pulling the girl towards her so that her lips collided with hers, Miles suddenly felt a hand – who knew whose – push him firmly back so that he fell onto the bed.

His eyebrows raised in surprise, he watched as the two girls put on a show for him, seductively smooching as they slowly removed each others’ garments: the figure-hugging tops they both wore, Jessica’s thigh-length skirt and Vanessa’s scandalous black hot pants all fell by the wayside as the two first years revealed their underwear in their private dance for him.

Both girls wore black now, though Vanessa’s underwear seemed seedy compared to Jessica’s classy attire. The dark-haired girl wore fishnet stockings that were holed in places as they rose up to a plain band around her thighs. As she moved around and about her friend, he saw that her black silk and lace bikini-cut panties were somehow worn, frayed here and there with mini ladders of the kind that you might see in a pair of nylons. Vanessa’s bra matched her panties, complete with the kind of holes that were either designer or involved some kind of bizarre moth problem in her closet.

Jessica, on the other hand, wore the kind of black lace set that was oozing class and riches. From her immaculate nylon stockings rising to elaborate lacy bands held by a matching suspender belt to her bra and slinky thong panties, she looked a class act in every respect.

The girls kissed each other, caressed each other, moved around each other slowly to show off their bodies to their audience in the most seductive way. He really didn’t know what to do or say.

After a moment or two of teasing – in which the girls even coaxed each others’ breasts and drew fingers over each others’ panty-clad mounds – they eventually decided to stop, to turn and wander over to the bed, to crawl up towards him like a couple of sleek panthers on the prowl.

Suddenly, they pounced, and in a whirlwind of hands and elbows and giggling laughter, virtually tore his clothes from him. With no mercy, they left him naked and vulnerable to their every desire.

He felt Jessica’s cool hands fumbling with his rigid erection as Vanessa moved up beside him to kiss his mouth. As the dark-haired girl locked lips with him, gripping his head in both of her hands, he found his own right hand appropriately in position between her thighs. She let out a low moan as his digits caressed her silk-covered crotch, finding the hot wetness beginning to soak the material over her oozing vagina.

Miles could detect the scent of arousal now in the air, mixing with the sweet cocktail of their blended perfumes, and as he slipped a finger under the edge of Vanessa’s panties to trace an irresistible line along her slick groove, it was his own turn to moan, with his cock now enveloped by the hot velvet of Jessica’s mouth.

The fairer-haired girl’s oral attentions may not have been quite as forceful as the blonde girl’s the previous night, but nevertheless he soon found himself beginning to go down the road towards inevitability. So it was something of a relief as she eventually broke off, and there was a slight pause as she and her close friend traded places.

He had survived the first wave of attack, but how long might he go for now, as the second took up where the first left off in all promptness? Jessica kissed him at first, slightly more tenderly and not so forcefully as Vanessa, as her felt the dark-haired girl’s hot breath, and then her lips and mouth on his throbbing penis. And he found her saturated panties, too, stroking her most sensitive area but he was not given the time to go any further than that damp, lacy barrier before she decided to progress further, lifting one leg to straddle his chest. The freckle-faced girl gave him one final brief kiss on the lips and a grin before shifting her hips up his body towards his head, slowly and carefully bringing her designer lace thongs up to his face, planting the soaking underwear gently on his lips.

He inhaled her spicy scent before softly nuzzling into that narrow scrap of moist material that covered her pussy. Caressing her now with his nose, his chin, his lips, his world was filled with her devilish aroma, and she let out a long satisfied sigh as she felt the heat of his mouth draw upon her aching vagina through the thin luxurious lace.

Now he nudged aside her panties, revealing her smooth folds to his oral exploration, and as he tasted Jessica’s tangy wetness from the source, running his tongue between her flushed pink labia, Miles now felt Vanessa slide his cock inside the tight confines of her own saturated pussy.

It was incredible – he’d never been with two girls, but there was hardly time to take it all in as the three of them feverishly sated their desires with each other in every way. How he maintained control, clicking into some Zen-like level of arousal in which he didn’t lose himself, didn’t release himself or render himself useless to them, he would never know.

He tasted Jessica, then later Vanessa and back again. The girls seemed to use his cock for their own ends, as well as his fingers, and seemed unafraid of directing their attention on each other. As he kissed Jessica, he would recognise the flavour of Vanessa in her mouth, and as he would kiss Vanessa, Jessica’s juices would be on her tongue.

And at last, as Jessica nuzzled at his throat, his fingers buried inside her vagina, and Vanessa pumped his hardness inside her own vagina, the sounds indicated that both girls were drawing near on another orgasm – simultaneously this time – and he found that he could no longer hold himself back, the hotness building to an irresistible force within him, his burning seed rising as their two girls’ voices rose, so that the wave of climax swept over them all in one mighty tsunami that shook them all to the roots.

Lying there later, feeling strangely exhausted again as he had after the blonde girl had finished with him the previous night, he noticed a drop of blood dribble from the corner of Jessica's mouth.

"You've cut your lip," he said, concerned, reaching for a tissue for her.

The other girl glared at her, as though she were breaking some fraternity rule, as though this was disgraceful disrespect being shown to this person who was clearly important to Jake, seemingly the leader of the fraternity in some capacity.

"My tongue," she said quietly, taking the proffered tissue to clear up the blood. "I think I bit my tongue."

"Don't worry about her," Vanessa said to Miles. "You ready for some more?"

                                        V.

He felt that familiar weakness when he woke: almost exactly the same as the previous morning, though perhaps slightly worse. Damn it. Perhaps it was time to go to the doctor.

His head was aching - a low, dull throb - and he felt slightly feverish, weak on his feet. It was like a horrific hangover, yet he knew for a fact that aside from a single Bud, he'd not had a thing to drink the previous night.

What a night it had been. Once again looking into the mirror, he smiled at himself - Jesus, who'd have thought it? Miles Scott, the quiet one who always sat at the front in lectures and spent his free time constantly training in the most self-disciplined way when he wasn't studying, so determined to make it big in the world of the martial arts. Who would have thought that he would have been involved in a threesome, a wild romp in the sheets with two stunning freshman girls?

"Ain't nothin' but a hound dog!" he said to himself with a chuckle.

But then his smile dropped. His hair had turned greyer still. Before, the grey hairs had only been noticeable if he looked close-up. Just a sprinkling that might even have always been there, he couldn't tell.

Now, though, it was unmistakable. You could see that there were grey hairs there, from a few yards away. It gave him quite a striking, distinguished air - mature, like George Clooney in one of his recent movies - but if this trend continued, his hair would turn to white. And that was freaky.

There was a mark on his neck, too. He rubbed at it, then shrugged. Love bite. Nothing much to worry about.

Hurriedly, he threw on some clothes and headed out the door wearing a pair of sunglasses this time. The sun still hurt a little - a little worse, now, raw on his skin rather than just his eyes. So his feet now took him firmly towards the college sanatorium. He had to get this checked out - the photosensitivity, the weak, sick feeling and the white hairs.

But then, on his walk, he saw her again.

Walking behind her - at a fixed distance, to keep him from seeing her - the blonde girl was following him. He could tell it was her - though there were plenty of beautiful blonde girls on campus, she was a league above any of them. And her hair was strikingly pale - easy to spot.

Though he felt a little weak, he decidedly to delay his trip to the doctor just then. There was time, the san didn't close until the evening.

What the hell was she doing, following him? Was she after him? Was she trying to intimidate him? Why him? If Tommo had been right, and she was out to destroy masculinity one at a time, why hadn't she given him a syringe full of whatever she'd had when she'd performed such exhilarating oral sex on him?

Quietly, he took a new route, walking down streets that few people used, taking a long, looping itinerary that crossed in on itself and took her around in circles. There was no doubting that she was following him. At last, he went round a corner and then suddenly stopped, pressing himself against the wall of the chemistry lab block, waiting for her.

Sure enough, she wondered around the corner and saw him there. It was clear that she wasn't expecting him to be there: he made her jump, in fact.

"Why are you following me?" he asked her calmly.

"You - " She was dressed all in black – her suit formal, but attempting to make her look insignificant, to blend in with the crowd. It didn’t do it very well, though.

"You weren't exactly subtle about it," he said. "Who are you?"

"I - " she said, and suddenly gasped as he swung her around and pressed her hard against the wall of the building, padding her down to check her pockets. She was clearly a little shaken up by his treatment of her: and as far as he was concerned, he was glad. She was a menace – and, possibly, much worse than that. There were a lot of sick people on the streets of America, after all, and colleges were by no means safe from them.

In one of her pockets – her inside jacket pocket – he found a black leather case - little more than the size of a wallet - inside which were four silver and glass syringes, full of a transparent fluid.

"Hmm… I believe we've found some evidence," Miles said.

"You don't understand," she said, and he could see something like fear in her pretty blue eyes.

"No, apparently I don't."

"I just wanted to talk to you," she said, looking around her, clearly to see if anyone else might come to her aid.

"Talk to me... or fill my blood stream with whatever... chemical you've got there?"

"Look," she said, trying to dispel her fear in order to show him she meant business. "You don’t understand. I work for the government…”

The words of Jake were ringing in his ears now - she's been hanging around campus for a while, now - since your sister died – and he felt the tears welling up around his eyes. Had this strange, sick, twisted girl managed to inject something into his sister?

What he was going to do he did not know, but the girl took advantage of the emotions suddenly overwhelming him – she somehow wriggled free before he could get a grip on her in that smooth suit. He took a few paces to try and catch her, but she was quick – athletically quick – her short skirt helping her in her desperate dash for freedom.

In his hands, he still held the set of syringes.

                                        VI.

He did not go to the doctor. For some reason, he felt the sanatorium would not have the capacity to find out what the fluid inside the syringes was. Thing was, he felt he really needed to get to the doctor – he was quite worried about the way he’d been feeling, that weakness and photosensitivity. The truth was, he was confused, not really knowing what was going on, nor what to do about it.

So without really thinking about it, he found himself heading over towards the Fraternity.

“Jesus!” said Jake when he laid eyes on the syringes.

“I found them in one of her pockets,” he explained, still feeling a little nervous though it was obviously all over.

The Frat house was a little empty that morning, seeming oddly quiet and perhaps a little ghoulish as the heavy curtains were drawn across all of the windows. The darkness was comforting to him, however, what with his sensitivity to the sun. The inhabitants of the place were no doubt still sleeping in after a night full of fooling about.

“She must’ve been trying to stick you, too,” Jake said as they both lounged about on the couches in front of morning TV. Jake himself was still wearing a terrycloth night robe. “Man, you gotta be careful. What you doing today?”

“Oh, you know,” he said, “I have a French class after lunch and a few things to take care of before that.”

“Welcome to stay here, dude. I’m sure Vanessa and Jess are around here somewhere…”

“Now there’s an idea,” he said, and Jake grinned, knowing what he was referring to.

“Those girls are very obliging,” Jake said, “and I here they’re quite taken with you.”

“I’ll have to take a rain check on that – maybe this afternoon, huh?”

The truth was, the very extent to which he felt comfort in remaining in the darkness was disturbing him greatly. If he had some kind of virus or disease, it would hardly be a good idea to go passing it around his new friends.

“Look, I’ll be back, huh?” he said, pulling himself to his feet once again.

“Hey, whenever,” Jake said with a mock military solute. The guy seemed somehow stoned – clearly he wasn’t much of a morning person, either.

He felt the pangs of regret tearing at him as he left the soothing confines of Omega-gamma-alpha – it would have been nice to roll around with those two girls again – but he had to prioritise the important things in life. Now he’d pulled back from that suicidal ledge, he was genuinely interested in his health once again.

Striding purposefully towards the sanatorium, he thankfully saw no sign of the blonde girl. But still, he did not feel safe, and took great care to keep an eye all around him for the first signs of her. Who was she? Why was she after him now, after he had apparently saved her and received oral sex as a reward from her? It just didn’t add up. If she was pure evil, looking to stick syringes into random men, why had she behaved that way with him on that first night? Did she really have anything to so with Sophie’s death? Or was he willing to accept that she was because it added some explanation to the entirely unknown circumstances surrounding his sister’s end.

His contemplation made him take his eye off the ball for a moment or two, and the next time he came to the end of a block, looking this way and that to check for traffic, then in front and behind as he remembered to check for the blonde girl, he received something of a shock.

The black guy who had been sitting with the blonde girl in Sophie’s memorial service was behind him - some yards away, but still, he was there.

“Shit,” he said aloud to himself and received an awkward glance from an old lady who had been standing next to him.

With the white man on the lights signalling that it was safe to walk, he hurried on across the street before taking another twisting route towards the sanatorium. After ten minutes’ walk, it was clear that the man was following him.

Looking back, now, a bead of anxious sweat creeping down his temple, he saw the African-American speaking into some kind of radio or communications device. It wasn’t a mobile – clearly there was something going on here.

Risking it, he belted through moving traffic to flee his pursuer while the man was concentrating on speaking to whoever it was on the other end of the line. On the other side of the street, he saw the guy express silent frustration as the traffic sped up and the street once more became uncrossable.

Miles turned and double backed on himself a few more times to make sure he had lost the guy before making a more resolute path towards the doctor’s office. The exhilaration of losing his tail soon wore off, and he felt that slight feeling of nausea and exhaustion return – the effects of the sunlight. With a deep breath, he focussed on putting one foot in front of the other, desperate to get medical help.

At the back of his mind, he was genuinely worried that the girl had somehow got to him with that syringe.

But his route to the doctor was, quite suddenly, blocked. As he came to a halt by another pedestrian crossing, a black sedan slowed to a halt in front of him, the shaded window winding down to reveal the passenger: the old man who had also been sitting with the blonde in the memorial service.

                                        VII.

“We just want to have a talk with you, Mr Scott,” the old man said, his voice sounding so cool, calm and collected, as though he really wasn’t bothered if they had their little talk or not.

Miles saw that the blonde girl was driving the vehicle, and he backed away slightly, but behind him now, he saw the black guy drawing near to close him off. The man was out of breath, clearly having had to run to catch up with him.

“Who the hell are you,” he said. “What the hell do you want with me?”

“That’s what we would like to explain,” the man smiled genially, like a favourite uncle or something. Freak. His skin was pale, almost greyish, somehow inhuman-looking.

“Why the hell does she keep trying to stick syringes into people?” Miles demanded, referring to the blonde girl sitting calmly behind the wheel of the automobile.

“Get in,” the man replied, as if it was the most natural suggestion in the world. “Get in, and we’ll try to let you understand what all this is about.”

Miles looked at the black man now standing next to him. He raised his eyebrows at Miles, in a manner that silently suggested following the old man’s offer. He wanted to follow the old man’s offer – ignorance was tearing at Miles now, the deep and ingrained feeling that nobody was giving him the full facts, that the events over the last few days just didn’t quite make sense.

“If any of you come near me, I’ll break bones,” he warned them all with quiet menace in his voice, correctly assuming the blonde girl had informed them of his abilities in unarmed combat.

“You’ll not be harmed,” the old man promised, “we’ll do nothing to you that you do not specifically agree with, I can assure you.”

Still, Miles was suspicious. “What do you mean, nothing I ‘specifically agree with’?” he asked.

“You’re ill, Mr Scott,” he replied, the uncannily accurate statement startling Miles substantially. “You are, aren’t you? You feel weak, sick, nauseous when you’re exposed to sunlight.”

“How did you – “ Miles was aghast.

“You’re going to feel a lot worse soon enough, I can assure you.”

“What have you done – “ he hissed angrily. “What has she done to me?”

“It’s not us that have made you feel this way,” the old man said without a trace of emotion. “Get in, Mr Scott. We can help you.”

The African-American man opened the back door of the sedan for him, and feeling that he had no option, that this was the only way he was going to find answers – whatever kind they might be – he stepped into the vehicle.

“Good,” the old man said as black man sat beside Miles, closing the door again before the blonde girl pulled away into the main flow of the traffic. “My name is John Graham,” the old man said before introducing the blonde girl and the African-American. “You’ve already encountered Bailey Donovan, of course, and this is Paul Taylor.”

“Hi,” Miles said warily to the others, then asked: “So what’s all this about?”

“How much do you know about the man called Jake, and the people he associates with?” John Graham asked.

“Not much,” he shrugged. “They knew my sister quite well – but she must have got to know them while I was abroad.”

“You were in Japan for just under a year,” Graham said, indicating that they certainly knew more about him than he about them.

“The first time I ever met him – any of them – was in that memorial service the other day.”

“They’re Strain-Five,” Graham said, and Miles did not know what he was talking about.

“What?” he asked.

“They are infected with a kind of virus,” the old man said – although of course, he wasn’t all that old in reality. Perhaps late fifties at the most.

“A virus?”

“Mr Scott, there’s an awful lot you don’t know about this – very few people know about it. That is the way we like to keep it, understand?”

“I suppose so.”

“The virus is very rare, and tends to be passed on only when the carrier intends to pass it to another person,” he explained. “Tell me: have you come into contact with another person’s blood over the past few days?”

“No, of course not, I – “ and then he remembered. The fight. Should he say anything?

“No matter,” Graham said, cutting off his chance to reply. “At some point, you must have. The virus is beginning to take a hold on you. We can cure it – don’t have any fears about that. But we have a slightly different proposition for you than just that.”

And with that, the car pulled into the driveway of a suburban house – quite a nice affair – and the three of them got out, with Miles doing likewise. As they walked inside, he couldn’t stop looking at the blonde girl – Bailey, wasn’t that her name? Her beauty was incomparable.

“This is purely a temporary home,” Graham said as they entered the building, an oddly residential building for the offices of whatever outfit this was, whether temporary or not.

“What does this virus do?” Miles asked, wanting – needing – to know. It was more than a little disturbing to hear he had the kind of virus that drew the attention of these weird types.

“It won’t kill you, Mr Scott,” Grahame said. The four of them came into a living room and found seats on floral couches – clearly, this place was a fully-furnished, rented residential property. “You have Strain-Five of the virus. Basically, it attaches itself to your DNA, altering the properties of your cells very slightly. That’s what viruses do, generally.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your cellular processes will change,” the African-American spoke now – Paul Taylor. He had a pleasant baritone voice, intelligent and somehow trustworthy. “The virus slows the ageing process down to virtually nothing. Your entire body will be strengthened to quite some extent, your cells will regenerate quickly in the case of injury.”

“Sounds perfectly okay to me,” Miles said, his eyebrows raised. This was all a little unbelievable. Perhaps that was why the past few days had seemed so strange.

“There are side-effects,” Graham said.

Bailey took up the briefing now, her voice sultry and seductive – like her entire appearance. Miles felt that if she asked him to do something – anything – a man might find it extremely difficult to resist if he wasn’t careful. She said: “You’ll feel ill when you are exposed to sunlight – the longer you have the virus, the more weak and sick you’ll be when exposed to ultra-violet rays.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“You’ll no longer require just food to survive,” she went on. “You’ll need to feed on the life force of others in order to continue to live much more than a few days.”

“What on earth are you talking about, life force – “

“When Strain-Five kicks in fully, you’ll feel a massive hunger for blood,” Graham said now, and Miles couldn’t help but snigger.

“Blood? What are you, Van Helsing?” he chuckled. “So Jake and the Frat boys are vampires, huh? Why didn’t you just come out and tell me, you jokers? You’re just like a bunch of basketcase cultists who can never admit they’re in a ‘cult’.”

“The virus is exceedingly old, Mr Scott,” Graham said seriously, his face neutral still. “Years ago, it was called vampirism. But not all the myths related to those old stories are true.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Miles shook his head. “That’s just a load of crap.”

“It’s not the blood they feed on, it’s the life force within the blood, Mr Scott. Strain-Five will cloud your mind soon, and you will see ordinary uninfected humans as little more than a food supply, Mr Scott.”

“I’ve heard about people like you, you need to get out more.”

“You look like they’ve already drunk from you, Mr Scott – do they know you’re infected yet? The grey hairs on your head – “

But Miles was up, on his feet. It was all too much. How could any sane man believe all this rubbish, the Bram Stoker, Anne Rice crap which was all very well on the pages of a book but was never more than pure fantasy.

“Keep away from me,” he said, and none of the three even moved from where they sat. “You just keep away from me.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Miles walked out of the building. He didn’t know what the hell they had done to him, but there was no way he was going to believe all that crap. The sun was making his head ache now, he felt drunk somehow, really sick. He had to get back to the Fraternity before he threw up.

                                        VIII.

Back at the Fraternity, there was no sign of Jake, no real sign of life either, for that matter. Miles took a seat on one of the couches, feeling relief coursing through his veins now that he was out of the sunshine. Thank God.

But why did it feel so good? Why was he so ill? Who had made him ill? Had someone made him ill, or was he just ill? What the hell were those guys talking about back there?

So many questions racing round his mind. They were enough to make him feel dizzy, sickness or not. He felt awful even apart from the illness. He just didn’t feel he could trust anyone now – those guys were plainly crackpots, but they had somehow sown the seed of suspicion in his head about Jake and the other Frat boys.

No, that stuff was ridiculous. Vampires! Wrap it up in all the scientific bullshit you wanted – virus Strain-Five, indeed – it was still bullshit.

“Oh hi, you’re back!”

Suddenly, Jessica bounded over the back of the couch and virtually landed in his lap.

“I missed you,” she purred, squeezing herself against him and kissing his mouth.

She was wearing a man’s shirt, which was entirely unbuttoned. Underneath, her supple breasts were bare and she wore nothing but a pair of white cotton panties. Miles couldn’t help but smile: she wasn’t particularly shy, though they were technically in public.

She giggled and began nuzzling into his neck. Miles smiled and soon found himself in something of a dreamy daze as her sweet perfume filled his nose and his finger caressed her warm, moist pussy through her soft cotton panties.

“Come on…” she whispered, “come upstairs…”

And he did, back to that same room where they found Vanessa, the darker-haired girl who was dressed now in a pink silk kimono and little else.

“Are, you found him!” she said.

In no time at all, they lay, one girl either side of him, now wearing just their panties, writhing on the bed. He found himself kissing Vanessa’s breasts, Jessica’s lips, then the faired-haired girl was astride him, his hard cock protruding from his pants and embedded inside her tight, wet pussy.

As before, it didn’t quite seem real, he felt weak and a little dizzy again, but so charged up by the raw physical contact with the girls. He felt another soft pair of lips gently caressing his throat now, and in his dreamy state, her didn’t realise at first that it was yet another girl. A red head…

“Who are you?”

The stern voice came from the door, and after a brief moment, Miles realised it was addressing him. The girls suddenly broke away from him, the mood shattered as was his dream-like state.

It was Jake, and behind him the Frat boys he’d first come up against were standing there like henchmen behind a James Bond supervillain, their arms folded and expressions grim.

“A friend of the Fraternity saw you getting into a car with those… those freaks,” Jake said bitterly. “Who the fuck are you, man?

Miles felt suddenly confused and a little horrified. “What – “ he said, but didn’t really know what to say. Damn it. How could they think that?

“What are you, undercover?” Jake said angrily. “You’re going to wait until we’re not looking and stick us with one of those syringes you just happened to ‘find’?”

“No – of course not!” Miles insisted, feeling himself blush a little for some reason. “I don’t know what they wanted – they tried to tell me this wild story that you guys are vampires or something – “

“You never went on exchange to Japan, did you? You were probably off training with them.” Jake wasn’t buying his plea of innocence. “We thought you were one of us – we were going to let you join the Fraternity, too. Become a full brother.”

“Jake – you’ve got it wrong – “ he said, but he could see none of them were going to believe or listen to him now. Those freaks had ruined it for him. His one refuge from loneliness. The family he craved. All gone.

“We’re going to drain you,” Jake said with deep, dark menace in his voice. “We’re going to drain you like we drained your scrawny, try-hard sister.”

Suddenly, a whirlwind of raw shock swept through him, it felt as though his stomach had been filled with boiling oil, his body was wrenched with surprise and pain. They had killed his sister. Poor Sophie had no doubt refused to join them, like him. The bitterness on Jake’s face was clear.

“Kill him,” Jake said coldly, and the henchmen closed in on him.

                                        IX.

The girls moved away from him now, and he saw with horror that both Jessica and the redhead, whoever she was, had blood leaking from their evil grins. God damn. So what, was it true? Did these guys really drink blood? Were they really vampires with some weird kind of virus the government was trying to hush up?

He didn’t have time to deal with the questions now running round his mind. He didn’t feel strong enough to take these guys on now, and in that bedroom there was little space to do so either. He backed away, off the bed and towards the window, thanking God he’d kept his clothes on unlike the girls.

The window was his only way out now, and it was a risky one. As the Frat boys edged towards him – they were not taking a risk either, after what he had done to them that first night – he pulled the window, which had been open a crack, open further.

“You know, she squealed as we sucked her dry,” Jake said, driving a metaphorical knife between his ribs. “You know why you weren’t able to see her body when she was dead? Because she was a wrinkled old hag when we finished with her – she wasn’t recognisable – “

He slipped out the window and slid down the sloped roof, somehow, somehow reaching the ground without much of a bump, but everything inside him felt as though it had been torn apart. They had killed his sister. The bastards had –

But now was not the time for that. He would have to deal with that whole issue later, but now as the Frat boys were running through the building to get out to the street to catch him, it was time for a hasty exit. Though the sun was beginning to sink in the sky now, he was still too weak to fight. He needed to go, find somewhere safe, build up his strength before coming back to sort them out.

He ran, ran with all he had left, his whole body aching and stinging in physical and mental anguish. He knew what he had to do now, knew where to go. He ran to that strange rented house in the suburbs, not even looking back to make sure he wasn’t being followed. They wouldn’t follow them here.

The front door was unlocked, and he was extremely relieved to cross the threshold of the building. Bailey was in the front room, dressed casually in a skin-tight white t-shirt and short turquoise skirt. She got up immediately she saw him, realising instantly that something was up.

“Help me,” he said weakly, and collapsed.

Later, he knew that it was much later, he woke to find himself in bed. There was a drip feeding a clear fluid into his arm, which disturbed him slightly, but he told himself to trust them – he had no other option now. What they had told him – as unbelievable as it had sounded – seemed to have come true.

“It’s just saline,” he heard Bailey’s voice nearby.

Turning his head, he saw that she was sitting there at his bedside, and she was a real sight for an ill man to perceive. So beautiful – she quite took the breath away. Just the sight of her warmed him inside, making him feel a little stronger.

“What happened?” she asked him with real concern in her voice.

“They killed my sister,” he said. “They killed Sophie.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You knew?”

“Her death was what drew us here,” she said. “I’m really sorry, Miles.”

“How did it happen? Did they really… drain her?”

The blonde girl placed a hand on his chest, stroking him through the thin sheet to comfort him. She said: “Every time someone drinks blood, taking someone’s life force, it prematurely ages that person a little. They were feeding from you, weren’t they? Your hair is – “

“I think so. I didn’t realise,” he nodded, feeling a little stupid.

“You won’t feel it when they do it,” she said. “They’ve developed some kind of anaesthetic to their bites. You have a mark – here. “ she touched his throat, where what he had assumed to be a love bite was to be found.

“Am I – “ he said, and she knew what he was asking.

“You’ll be fine – you’ll recover fully with time. No, the worrying thing is that you seem to have the Strain-Five virus.”

“I do?”

“Did you come into contact with some of their blood? It can’t have been much – the infection is very slow.”

“It must have been that night – that night I first saw you. When I fought those… those morons… I tasted blood, I knew it wasn’t mine. Is there anything you can do?”

She smiled. “We can cure you. It’s no problem – it’s not at all like on TV, we’re not going to stake you,” she chuckled. Then suddenly Bailey’s face turned serious. “I have a confession to make,” she said.

“What? What is it?”

“That night, that night we first met?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m afraid I fed from you, too.”

                                        X.

Miles sat up with a jolt. The nightmare was continuing: it got worse and worse. These people were vampires too – he couldn’t trust anyone. What was she going to do now? Drain him while he was in this weakened state, suck him dry like his poor sister?

“You’re vampires?” he said, aghast.

“No, no,” she said quickly, realising that what she’d sat was fairly incriminating. “We’re not like the others,” she insisted. “We don’t drink blood, we don’t kill anyone, we don’t even harm them…”

But Miles found his head spinning. He tried to brush off the drip that was feeding him God-knew-what. Bailey was as deceptive as Jake – he had let her incredible beauty really get to him, her smouldering good looks had defeated his defences like nothing else –

“We’re Strain-Four, Mr Scott.” The voice was that of John Graham, the older man who seemingly led this inexplicable group. His voice had instant gravitas, provoked instant respect while also reassuring in the way a favourite grandfather’s might.

Entering the room now, dressed all in black, Graham said: “We have a similar virus to them, it’s true. We do need to feed from humans. But we’re Strain-Four, not Strain-Five. There’s precious few of us left these days, and those of us there are now feel responsible for keeping our irresponsible cousins from spiralling out of control.”

“Irresponsible?” Miles said with disgust. “You call sucking a young girl dry, draining her to death… you call that irresponsible?”

“No,” Graham sat down on a chair on the opposite side of the bed to Bailey, leaning back and letting out a deep breath. “No, I’m as disturbed as you are by it, Mr Scott. That is why we are here. We have investigated your sister’s death, we have identified those present…”

“Genius.”

“…The next step is to neutralise the threat to society, Mr Scott. I can assure you, we want as little harm done by these monsters as you do.”

“But apparently you’re a monster, too,” Miles was seriously indignant at all this.

“We don’t feed on blood, Mr Scott, let me repeat that.”

“So what do you feed on, sweat?”

“We feed from the emissions of the human sexual organs, Mr Scott. I can assure you, the donors are quite willing.”

Miles laughed – he couldn’t help it. This all sounded so ridiculous, so completely fanciful. “You can’t be serious! That’s ludicrous!”

“I can assure you, it’s true,” Graham did seem kind of serious. “Look. Let me explain. The virus – it’s called the vita anglorum virus – is extremely old, there’s recorded cases stretching back from the first recorded human history. The first three strains we know about seem to have disappeared over the millennia – there hasn’t been a reported sighting for centuries – we now know of two left. Strain-Four came first, though there’s not been enough study about it all yet. Strain-Five was some sort of mutation. So its effects are similar in a lot of ways, but also different in many.”

“So what’s the difference?” Miles was quiet now. He had to admit, listening to Graham was somehow comforting, and right now he was just glad he wasn’t being drained by the Fraternity.

“Well, I’m sorry we’re not real experts here, there is still much that is not yet fully understood even by ourselves. The virus – both strains – attack the human body at cellular level. The viral DNA attaches itself to the DNA in each human cell and corrupts it. It means that the body has a far enhanced regenerative ability – equally so in both strains, though it takes longer for Strain-Four sufferers to heal their wounds than Strain-Fives.

“The same effect also radically slows down the aging process – we’re not sure what the average life expectancy is, but it amounts to hundreds of years at least.”

“Nice,” said Miles. “So what about garlic – can you handle that?”

John Graham smiled and looked at Bailey, who was also smiling at that. “Some of the legends of vampires are not true,” the older man said. “Crucifixes too, have no meaning to either Strain-Fours or Fives, and we can be seen in mirrors just like anyone – or anything – else. Everyone has to obey the laws of physics, after all.”

“The stake through the heart?”

“Well, it’ll probably do most of us serious damage. We are human, you know, though we’re infected. Anything like that – decapitation, and so on – any serious trauma could kill us. The regeneration process cannot occur quite quickly enough to sort out things like that, you see. As an infected person gets older, of course, he or she gets stronger and may possibly get to the stage where they can cope with some things like that. But that would take a fair while, I would wager.”

“What about sunlight?” Miles asked. “When I had that Strain-Five inside me, it made me feel really sick going out in the sun…”

“The symptoms of both strains of the virus include some sensitivity to the sun,” Graham admitted. “We’re by no means as bad as Strain-Fives in sunlight, mind you, but we’re stronger in the dark – and they’re much stronger. The virus changes the skin cells, you see. Ultra-violet light is not good for us.”

“So wait,” Miles said. “How come you guys don’t drink blood, then?”

“It’s too strong,” it was Bailey that spoke now. “The human life force can be found in all fluids produced in the body, in varying levels. In the saliva and most other fluids there’s only a trace. But in sexual emissions, there’s much more – with especially high levels found around the time of an orgasm – “

Miles blushed at that, hearing this girl, who he had to admit he had a huge crush on, talking to freely about sex.

“ – and that’s perfect for us. Blood is very much more saturated by life force. We think it must be because it is the vital fluid of the body. But it’s too much for Strain-Fours.”

“It tends to rupture our blood vessels,” Graham added.

“But when you take from ‘donors’ or whatever you call the poor bums – they do feel weaker afterwards, don’t they?” Miles asked. “I mean, I had a great time with you that night, but I felt seriously light-headed afterwards – “

“It isn’t good to use the same donor more than twice in any six month period or so,” Graham nodded sagely. “But they recover, and we Strain-Fours are very strict about using a donor too often. Strain-Fives sometimes adhere to a similar code – certainly they do if they wish to avoid detection. But that strain of the virus corrupts absolutely, and far too often we find ourselves uncovering murderous Strain-Fives.”

It was a lot to take in, but as Graham came to a halt, the black guy – Paul Taylor – entered the room, dressed in his standard suit unlike the others, but carrying a meal tray. It was an odd combination.

“Hi, how you doing?” he asked Miles, and laid a meal of what appeared to be chicken soup and a bowl of ice cream on his lap.

“Hey, good – thanks.”

“No problem. Know how it feels – we all do.”

“So where do I go from here?” he said taking a sip of the hearty soup from the spoon Taylor had provided.

“Well, we’ll cure you, of course,” Graham said. “I’m afraid we’re obliged to do that whatever the score. Our task in life is to stop Strain-Five in all its forms, you see. Sadly, invariably we can only ever be alerted to it by newspaper and wire reports of extreme cases, where Strain-Fives turn really dangerous. But that is our responsibility.”

“You do work for the government, then?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “You could say that, I suppose. You’ll not find us in any government directory, though. And even in the intelligence services very few people know anything about us.”

“So why are you telling me all this?”

“Why, because we want you to join us, Mr Scott,” he smiled warmly. “But that, of course, is up to you. Once you’re cured, you’re entirely free to go.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, we ask you to keep all this information from anyone, but to be honest nobody will believe you if you reveal it, so we’re not unduly worried.”

“Why me?”

“To be honest, Mr Scott, we’re impressed by your abilities. Tales of your single-handed combat proficiency returned to us from your night with Bailey, here. We – all of us – believe you might help us move in a new direction in our campaign against the Strain-Five. You see, so far our main weapon has been stealth and cunning – we try to capture them and treat them, but we are not very capable physically when pitted against them.”

“I see.”

“And what does joining you involve?” Miles asked.

“Well, I suppose you’d have to contract the Strain-Four virus,” Graham said, and Miles felt very wary of this. “You could work with us without it, of course. But to be honest, your shelf life would be far longer if you became like us. You’d be stronger, too, when we needed you to be.”

“Well, I don’t know… I’m not sure if willingly contracting a virus…”

“Of course, it’s a hard concept to accept, naturally.” Both Bailey and Graham now stood up. Graham said: “But look, have a rest, recuperate, recover, have a sleep – think about it. We’ll understand whatever you decide – either way.”

The three of them left him there, his head reeling, the thought process whirling through the cogs in his mind like nothing else he could ever have imagined. After the comforting soup and ice cream, however, his exhaustion led him to unavoidable and blissful sleep.

When he woke up, his wrist watch informed him that he had been asleep for over twenty-four hours. It was morning, but not that of the day after he had gone to sleep. The drip had been removed from his body now, and as he got up, he found that actually, he felt an awful lot better. Whatever they had given him had really done the trick. He was a little uncertain on his feet, but much, much better.

His thought process was still a little addled, however, although he did now know what his choice was to be. There was no other decision appropriate now, not with his sister having gone through what she did.

Quietly, he wondered downstairs, where the three of them were sitting in the front room, seemingly discussing him. They looked up and were quiet as soon as they saw him.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

                                        XI.

John Graham nodded, smiled even – something he seemingly did not do often, though not necessarily because he wasn’t a nice guy. But both Bailey and Taylor’s smiles were wholesome and clear. They stood up and there were approvals all round.

“Just promise me one thing,” Miles said.

“What?” Graham asked.

“Promise me that my sister will get the justice she deserves.”

“Of course,” Graham nodded again solemnly. “When you’re ready, that will be the first thing we sort out.”

“Great,” said Miles. “So when do we do this?”

“Well, now, if you’re ready,” Graham said. Then he turned to Bailey and said cryptically: “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

She nodded, though Miles thought he detected a hint of nervousness in her expression. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m in perfect shape for it.”

“Well just you be careful,” the older man insisted.

“Come with me,” Bailey told Miles, and he saw a little flame of something that might also have been excitement in her eyes.

“You done this before?” he asked her as she led him upstairs to one of the bedrooms – clearly hers for the duration of the group’s stay, since the wardrobe was full of her clothes, there was female underwear hanging over the armchair in the corner and a number of candles stood on the bedside table.

“No,” she said. “Never. It happens so rarely, you know? And actually, I’m not all that old – even if we do have this whole longevity thing going. I was only made a few years ago.”

“I would have thought you guys would have wanted more of you to go up against the Strain-Fives. I mean, they seem to spread their numbers fairly frequently…”

“It’s easier for them. It can be dangerous for us – there’s a risk I could die, you know.”

“Then why do you want to do this?” he asked her as she lit the candles.

“Because we need someone like you. Someone strong. We’ve never fought, you see. It would be a whole new direction for us. Our fight has always been by stealth. Besides, I… I guess I like you.”

“But I don’t want you to die – “ he said weakly.

“I won’t die,” she said reassuringly. “I’m physically fit at the moment, I’m not too old.”

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she said, as removed her jacket, so completely serious that he instantly understood the consequence of this decision.

"Yes," he said quietly, his eyes wide at her skin-tight t-shirt and short revealing skirt..

"You'll spend the rest of your life forced to feed on humans," she warned.

"I know. But they'd be giving it willingly, right?"

She smiled, closing and locking the door. "Most of them can't wait to give it up."

"So it's not like Strain Fives, is it?"

"They feed by stealth and by force. You have to when you need fresh blood."

"So how do we do this?" he said, his choice made. "How do you make someone Strain-IV?"

"Only females can pass on the virus - we're the carriers, you see, not the men. They - you can suffer from the virus, although I guess 'suffer' is a bad word for it. You don't really suffer. Not unless you haven't fed for a while."

"So how do you - "

"You have to feed from me," she said lustfully, and her panties dropped from under her skirt to her ankles.

Miles raised his eyebrows, and she grinned.

“When you feed, you only get life force from the person you’re feeding on when they orgasm,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “I think I can handle that.”

Bailey brought one of her fingers up to his mouth. It was wet, slick with her juices. He took her digit inside his hot mouth, tasting her. It had been a while since he had tasted the like, but he recognised the scent and flavour of female arousal. But the athletic blonde girl tasted different from what he remembered somehow. Sweeter – definitely sweeter – fuller, more creamy. Her juices seemed to fizz slightly on his tongue – he couldn’t quite describe it or explain it. “You want some more?” Bailey said with a mischievous smile, perhaps knowing that he now craved more. She sat down on the corner of the nearest bed, parting her thighs slightly. “Down, boy,” she ordered him. It was clear what was going to be happening in the near future. Kneeling down between her legs, his heart beat was pumping, as if along to the relentless beat of the dance music. The soft candlelight flickered on Bailey’s milky thighs as she pulled up the tiny skirt to reveal her beautifully moist pussy.

“Afterwards,” she said. “You’ll have to help me recover, you know.”

“How would I do that?”

“You can decrease the chances that I’ll die if you give me some of your life force when you have taken from me. Balance it out.” Miles pulled off his top - far nicer to have skin-on-skin contact with her while he saw to her needs. Looking up at Bailey’s eyes, he saw a seriously fiery expression on her face.

“But if you’re too weak to feed from me…” he said.

“It’ll be up to you,” she said, running her hand through his hair. “You can donate through intercourse too, you know, though incidentally, a female cannot donate through intercourse since no fluid goes into the male’s body. But it works this way round.”

“Well then,” he smiled. “That will be something to look forward to.” Gently, he kissed his way along one of Bailey’s firm inner thighs. It was strange, he would normally have begun with a bit of fooling around, kissing, touching, removing clothes - not straight into the steamy side of things. But he sensed she was already beyond the point of arousal by a long way. And this was strictly business, of course.

Kissing his way up her inner thigh, he tasted a slight saltiness on her skin – contrasting to the sweetness he still recalled from her finger - and getting closer to her delightfully trimmed pubic patch, Bailey’s scent hung heavy in the air. He kissed his way around the soft skin of her lower abdomen and her mound, edging closer to her open flower that glistened in the light of the candles.

The air was saturated, so that every breath he took was filled with her fragrance - the blend of luxurious perfume blending with the raw spice of her untamed arousal. As his hot mouth moved down the crease between her legs and her crotch, he looked up to see the desire on her face, and she mouthed a plea for him to take from her what he needed. Creeping closer and closer to her labia, he tasted the first traces of her fresh moisture, which made her smooth pussy lips slippery, removing the friction and allowing his warm lips to slide over her flesh. Her tangy juices were strengthened by the saltiness of perspiration, and at last as he reached the soft pinkness of her inner labia, his mouth and tongue exploring her soaking groove, the build-up was over, and the real ride was beginning. He heard her moan louder than before now that his hot mouth smothered her sensitive vagina, his flexible tongue lapping at her free-flowing juices, which tasted so sweet, so perfect, with a strange kind of energy that he couldn’t quite determine but drove him on with ever heightened need. Bailey was warmed up considerably now, writhing and moaning as he lapped at her nectar, his tongue delving inside her pussy lips and swirling around the little pink bud of her clitoris to provoke her into louder moans, more intense heavy breathing. For a while, he slipped a finger inside her, to sample the smouldering wetness of her vagina and urge her on ever closer to her climax. He had the feeling that that was where the transfer would take place. He would probably have consumed enough of her come by now to slowly turn – but he didn’t want to waste any time here. If most of the life force was contained in the sexual fluids during the orgasm period, that was what he needed. Half his face seemed covered in her juices by now, though with his ever increasing hunger, he was doing his very best to lap up as much as he could. Perspiration also mottled his brow from the sheer heat and intensity of being there between her thighs. What an incredible experience. But now, Bailey’s whole body began to shiver and quake as his rhythm on her clit, his flicking touches across her labia and that finger caressing the inside of her vagina became almost too much for her to handle. Her hands crawled over his head, crushing him to her body as the explosive orgasm welled up inside her. At last, she yelled her sweet last, high-pitched and raw in her satisfaction and before she finally released him from his grip, he moved back to gently focus on her vagina, lapping up the flood as she came in his mouth. It was sensational, and sure enough that energy within her juices became so much more intense as she rose to her peak, like a beer compared to hard liquor. He felt something taking hold of his insides now, and it only drove him on to lick her and suck up her pussy juices with all the more fervour.

“Oh God!” she cried as her body shuddered its last, and Miles felt the life force surge through his veins, reaching every cell in his body now. “Please…” she moaned quietly, and he realised she must be edging near danger, her energy levels dangerously low now as he fed from her.

Quickly, he pulled away and stood up to almost tear off his remaining clothes. Bailey just lay there, breathing but silent, her legs apart, her pink folds still oozing her come.

He was already hard as hard could be, and though she was tight around him she was already well lubricated. He glided inside her, making her moan in pleasure despite her weak state, and as he held open her legs, he filled her completely, pushing his cock all the way inside. He wasn’t here to give her another orgasm now, this was a real race. But he was so consumed by arousal, what with such wonderful intimate contact with this insanely attractive girl, it didn’t take long to reach his own climax, and he felt that blissful surge as his hot seed boiled up within him to be pumped inside Bailey’s tight vagina.

                                        XII.

“You sure about this?” John Graham said to Miles Scott as they stood there in the darkness, just outside the front door of the Fraternity house.

“They killed my sister,” he replied quietly, and that was that.

The older man held back – he was not one to get involved in all that. But Taylor and Bailey followed close behind Miles as he suddenly launched himself through the front door of the Fraternity, where one of their all-night parties seemed to be in full flow.

Their surprise entrance was perfect: who knew how many Strain-Fives there were in here, but when they crashed through that door several of the couples seemingly making out on the various floors and couches suddenly broke up from what they were doing with blood seeping from their lips.

Taylor and Bailey held back then, helping each other the best they could, and though they were as fit and healthy as could be, they were neither of them fighters.

Miles on the other hand was an immense tower of strength, his emotions aiding him in taking out the Strain-Fives who threw themselves at him. Grinding kicks, cruel chops, his every blow struck home with grisly success. Taylor watched transfixed, as did Bailey although it came as less of a surprise to her, having witnessed him before.

Once again, it felt a little odd going against the words of his former instructors: he had always been taught in the context of self-defence, that his incredible skill ought only ever to be used defensively, not in attacking someone. But this, in a way, was self-defence. And morally, he had no problem in what he did.

Noticing that the blood suckers were beginning to fall by the wayside, Taylor and Bailey now rushed forward. In their hands, Miles saw that they held syringes full of the serum that had brought his own body back from the Strain-Five infection.

The serum didn’t seem to affect the Frat members much, and Miles noticed that some of the younger members of the Fraternity seemed willing to have their shots without being knocked out by Miles.

But now others came – from upstairs. He saw Jake and his henchman appear, and these entered the fray with more ferocity. Taylor and Bailey had to fend off some of the henchmen, too, though it was clear Miles was the main event, and there was status for the vamps to gain in overcoming him, so they mostly concentrated their efforts on him.

For a while, Miles seemed seriously under siege, these monsters were clearly stronger that most of the juniors in there. But at last, he began to lay out the henchman - Gus, Brad, Finchey and Tommo, all slumping down defeated, for Taylor and Bailey to do their bit with the science.

But this time, as they administered the cure, Miles witnessed something new. Now dealing solely with Jake, who continued to taunt him between blows about their part in his sister’s death, he hardly had time to watch what was happening. But he saw that Gus, then Brad, then Tommo and finally Finchey were somehow shrivelling up, then crumbling into grey ash-like dust. What the hell?

Jake was strong. His blows were powerful, and actually got in a few blows on Miles that were more than just smacking against the newest Strain-Four’s defensive blocks. The strength of his fighting was astounding, in fact, considering the lack of formal training he obviously had.

But where Jake had raw power behind him, Miles had blistering speed and technique. At long last, a swift roundhouse kick to the head crunched bones in the Fraternity leader’s neck, and bar a brief moment of sudden surprise, that was it for Jake. He was dead before he even hit the ground, before a syringe of the serum had even touched his skin.

“My God, where d’you learn to do that?” Taylor asked, his mouth open in complete disbelief.

Miles shrugged. “It’s a little frightening what I’m capable of sometime,” he said.

“It’s not over yet,” it was Graham – he entered the building now, assured of safety. Though he seemed old, his body clearly wasn’t strong or fully fit. He was a cautious man.

Graham stooped down and injected Jake with yet another syringe of the transparent fluid. Suddenly, much quicker than his henchman, Jake vanished into a great cloud of grey dust, a strange loud whistling noise in the air accompanying his transformation into nothingness.

“Good night’s work, everybody,” their leader said. “Well done. Miles, I’m very impressed – I knew we were right in getting you involved.”

“Thanks,” Miles grinned. But then the grin turned sour. “Wait,” he said. “It’s not over yet – there are two girls missing.”

“Two? You’re sure?”

“I’m certain of it,” he said.

“They’re none of these…?”

“You – where’s Vanessa and Jessica?” Miles demanded of one of the first year Frat boys. “They’re first years like you, aren’t they?”

“Uh-uh,” the first year said, fear clearly imprinted on his face after seeing Jake and his cronies disappearing into dust like that. “They weren’t first years. Weren’t even enrolled in the college, far as I know.”

“They weren’t? I thought they were sorority girls…”

“No – they were, like, from town or something. Never went to any classes - treated Jake like he was their own personal play thing, I mean I never saw anything like it - ”

Graham shook his head mournfully. “I think they’ve got away from us.”

“Where’ve they gone? You think we could catch them?” Miles said.

“No, no, I think we’ve misjudged them. I don’t think your old friend Jake was the originator of this little group of Strain-Fives at all. I think either one or both of those girls was much older then they let on.”

“We’ll never catch them now,” Taylor said. “Not if they’re matured infections.”

“Such beautiful phraseology,” Miles smiled ironically.

“I’ve no doubt they’ll re-surface again in the future,” Graham said reassuringly. “I feel certain we’ve ended this particular project of theirs – I’d say Jake and those boys there were most likely to blame for the death of your sister. Powerful blood suckers prefer fresh flesh, they don’t drink to the point of death unless they’re starving. Their underlings are the ones that tend to do that. But anyhow, we’ll no doubt encounter them one day in the future, and then they will not escape.”

                                        XIII.

“How do you… you know, just go up and get a girl like that…” Miles said as he and Taylor entered the busy downtown club.

“Hey, didn’t anybody tell you about the pheromone side-effect of this thing?” he smiled revealing big white teeth. “You don’t have to go to them, they’ll come to you. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like they can sense you’ll give them a good time or something. You’ll see.”

“Right, then.”

“Might as well enjoy, brother – tomorrow it’s back to D.C., and the girls there aren’t nearly so tasty! Okay, go to it, my man!”

They laughed, and then split up in the wild, dark, loud night club that was packed with young college and non-college dancers. As he walked through the crowd, he sensed a very strange effect taking place. The heads of the young women were clearly turning towards him.

As he walked towards the bar, quite a few of them gave him flirtatious glances, offering themselves silently to him to do his bidding. Wow. This could be quite something.

There was a girl by the bar – talking with another girl who was most likely a close friend. He spotted her from a distance – clearly, something quite special. Not nearly as special as Bailey, of course, but sadly he wasn’t going to be able to feed from her, what with her infected status.

This girl was mouth-watering, though. Short, tidy cherry hair, creamy white skin, pretty face with big brown eyes and a nice trim body to boot – all wrapped up in nice, skimpy clothing including the kind of mini skirt that would mean easy access.

But what the hell would he say to her?

“Hi,” she said to him as he approached, taking him a little by surprise.

“Uh… hi,” he said. Jesus, what was this? It was as if his skin was emitting some kind of drug, the female equivalent of Viagra.

“Have we ever met before?” she said, her brow furrowed as she clearly couldn’t understand why she was having this sudden and complete urge to screw his brains out.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“What would you like to drink?” she asked. Her friend looked more than a little surprised, too, at the redhead’s sudden and strange behaviour towards him.

“I’d like you, for a start,” he said, going with the flow and pushing her apparent lack of inhibitions seemingly to the limits.

“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing her purse and waving a quick good-bye to her confused friend.

Wow, Miles thought, his head spinning. Perhaps feeding wasn’t going to be so difficult after all.

To be continued…