Chapter 20: The Quad Becomes a Hunting Ground
The quad lay silver under the full moon. Fog drifted low across the lawns, pooling around the benches and swallowing the stone paths at their edges. The five of them came out of the nursing wing in a loose line, their footsteps making no sound at all.
Alisha stopped at the top of the steps and breathed in. The night was thick with scent. Warm blood, cut grass, distant beer, the sour fear of a girl walking home alone two hundred yards away.
"Do you smell that?" she said. "That's what a campus is. Six thousand heartbeats and almost none of them paying attention."
Veronica stood beside her, nostrils flaring. Her crimson eyes moved across the fog, tracking movement. "I can hear them. All of them. Like a hundred little drums."
"They're louder at night. Daylight dulls us, dulls them too." Alisha turned to face the two newborns. "Tonight you learn three things. How to lure, how to feed, and how to clean up after yourself. Chloe and Jessica went through it three nights ago. Agnes and I will watch. You do the work."
Haley flexed her fingers at her sides. Her scrub top was torn, the buttons gone forever, and she'd tied it at the waist. "And if we screw up?"
"Then someone dies too fast or gets away screaming, and we fix it." Alisha smiled, fangs catching the moonlight. "But you won't screw up. I felt how fast you learn."
They moved down the steps and out across the lawn. The fog wrapped around their calves. Alisha kept them downwind of the paths without explaining why; the newborns followed her lead without asking. Agnes drifted at the rear, her latex gleaming black and wet-looking in the moonlight, her grey eyes sweeping the campus like a scanner.
"There." Chloe pointed with her chin. Near the old fountain at the quad's center, a boy sat on the rim scrolling his phone, the blue glow washing his face. Beyond him, a girl crossed from the library, arms hugging a backpack to her chest, taking the lit path because it felt safer.
"Two loners," Jessica said. "They're not together."
"They will be, by the time you're done with them," Alisha said. "That's the first lesson. Lure. Never chase on open ground. Make them walk into the dark on their own feet, smiling. Veronica, the girl. Haley, the boy. Ask them something. Anything a stranger would ask."
Veronica tilted her head. "Like what?"
"A lost key. A question about a class. Cry if you have to." Alisha touched her cheek. "You were human last week. Remember what opened doors for you when you were."
Veronica nodded, and then she was gone, moving through the fog in a straight line so fast the mist hardly stirred. Haley watched her go, licked her fangs once, and followed at a slower, human-seeming pace.
Alisha stepped back into the shadow of a spreading oak. Agnes came to stand beside her, then behind her, and cold hands settled on her hips.
"You're tense, Ms. Parker," Agnes murmured. "Your new cock has been hard since we left the stairwell. I can smell it."
Alisha laughed under her breath. "Watch the lesson."
"I am watching." Agnes's fingers worked at her skirt, unzipping it with unhurried precision, one-handed, silent. "They won't need us for ten minutes. The newborns are slow because they're savoring. I intend to savor too."
She pulled the skirt down over Alisha's hips and took her cock out into the cold night air. It was already rigid, dark at the tip, pulsing. Agnes's gloved hand closed around the shaft and stroked once, slow, from base to crown, her thumb dragging across the head.
"Fuck," Alisha breathed.
"Quietly." Agnes pressed her lips to Alisha's ear. "You're the teacher tonight. Teachers don't moan in front of their students."
Down by the fountain, Veronica had reached the girl on the path. Alisha could hear every word as if she stood beside them. The girl was saying something about the library closing at midnight, and Veronica was laughing, saying she'd lost her key card somewhere near the old fountain, could she help me look, it would take a minute. The girl hesitated, then turned off the lit path and walked with her into the fog.
Haley was simpler. She sat down next to the boy on the fountain rim and asked if he had a lighter. He didn't smoke, but he stopped scrolling, and that was all it took.
"Look at them," Agnes whispered. She had gathered Alisha's cock upward and was positioning herself, her long dress hiked, one latex-clad thigh braced against the oak. "So gentle. So patient. They're naturals."
She sank down onto Alisha's cock in one smooth, deliberate motion. The head stretched her open and she kept going, taking it inch by inch until her ass met Alisha's hips and she was seated to the root, full and still, a low hiss escaping her teeth.
Alisha gripped the tree trunk and held on. Agnes was tight, impossibly tight, cold inside and clenching, and the moonlight put a silver edge on the grey skin of her throat.
"You feel everything more now," Agnes said. She began to ride, rising and falling in long slow strokes, her dress rustling against Alisha's thighs. "Tell me you feel it."
"I feel it." Alisha's voice came out rough. She found Agnes's hips with her hands and pulled her down harder on the next stroke, driving up to meet her. The slap of their bodies was soft, muffled by the fog, lost under the fountain's trickle.
Out on the quad, Veronica had led the girl behind the boathouse. Through the fog Alisha watched her turn, watched the girl's face change from helpful to confused, watched Veronica's hand slide gently into her hair. A whisper. Then the girl was pressed against the boathouse wall, and Veronica's mouth was at her throat.
Haley stood up from the fountain rim and said something to the boy. He followed her toward the dark of the hedge line, grinning like he'd won something.
Agnes fucked herself on Alisha's cock faster, her thighs flexing, her breath coming in short controlled bursts. She reached down between her own legs and worked her clit with two gloved fingers, rolling it, grinding.
"They're feeding," she hissed. "Both of them. Slow, like you told them. Feel it, Alisha. Feel them drink while you're inside me."
Alisha could feel it, or imagined she could. The newborns' pleasure came off them like heat, and her own cock throbbed inside Agnes with every pull of that cold clenching cunt. She drove up harder, and Agnes grunted, her claws digging through Alisha's blouse into her shoulders.
"Harder. I want to cum when they do. I want to feel the whole quad at once."
"You're such a glutton." Alisha braced her back against the oak and fucked up into her with real force now, the head of her cock hammering deep, her balls tight and aching. "Then take all of it."
Veronica's head snapped back behind the boathouse, her hips jerking against the girl, and Haley's moan drifted across the lawn a second later. The sound of two feedings, twin and rhythmic, rolled through the fog.
Agnes shattered first. Her whole body locked, her cunt clamping down around Alisha's shaft, her claws raking four red lines across Alisha's shoulder. She came with a sound between a hiss and a sob, flooding cold around Alisha's cock.
Alisha followed a stroke later, burying herself to the hilt and unloading inside her, thick ropes pulsing deep, her hips stuttering through it while Agnes ground down to milk every drop.
They stayed joined, gasping quietly against the oak. Across the quad, the fog swallowed everything but two pairs of glowing crimson eyes.
"Lesson two is over," Alisha murmured. "Here comes lesson three."
Veronica was already walking toward them, leading the girl by the hand. The girl's eyes were glassy, her throat marked with two small punctures, her lips parted and confused. Behind her came Haley and the boy, his shirt untucked, a dazed smile on his face.
"What do we do with what they saw?" Haley called softly.
Agnes slid off Alisha's cock, smoothed her dress, and smiled with all her fangs. "That," she said, "is the best part of the night."
Agnes took the glassy girl from Veronica's hand and steered her to the fountain rim, bending her over the cold stone. The girl's backpack slid off her shoulders and dropped into the wet grass. Her skirt was already hiked up where Veronica had left it, her thighs trembling.
"She's mine tonight," Agnes said. "Alisha. Finish her claim properly."
Alisha unbuckled herself and stepped up behind the girl, pressing the hard length of her cock against the slick heat between her thighs. The girl whimpered, confused, her fingers scrabbling at the fountain's mossy lip.
"Shh," Alisha murmured. She notched the head against the girl's cunt and pushed in, slow at first, splitting her open around the blunt crown. The girl gasped, a sound that broke into a moan halfway up. "There it is. That's the sound I wanted."
"Please," the girl managed. "I don't, I don't understand."
"You don't need to." Alisha gripped her hips and drove forward, burying herself to the hilt in one hard slam. The girl cried out, her whole body jerking against the stone, her cunt clenching around the sudden fullness. Alisha held there, savoring the hot clutch of her, then began to fuck her in earnest, hips smacking against the girl's bare ass with sharp wet slaps that carried across the silent quad.
Agnes watched for a moment, her grey eyes fixed on where Alisha's cock vanished into the girl again and again. Then she raised her own wrist to her mouth and tore it open with her fangs. Dark blood welled up along the pale line of the vein.
She crouched at the fountain rim, took the girl's chin in her gloved hand, and turned her face toward the wound. "Look at me," she said. The girl's dazed eyes found the black ribbon of blood and her pupils blew wide. Agnes pressed her wrist to the girl's lips. "Drink, little one. Drink and stop being afraid."
The girl's tongue touched the blood. A shudder ran through her whole body, and then she sucked, hard, her throat working, her hands flying up to grip Agnes's forearm.
"That's it," Agnes said, her voice soft for once. "Good girl."
Alisha felt the change through the girl's body, a fresh clench of heat around her cock as the blood took hold. She slammed in deeper, harder, fucking the girl through the transformation, feeling her grow tighter and wetter with every swallow.
"She's turning," Alisha breathed. "I can feel her coming alive around me."
"I decided at the boathouse," Agnes said. "She walked into the dark for a stranger without one word of protest. That's the temperament." She stroked the girl's hair while she fed her, clinical and tender at once. "Another coven sister for the family."
Behind them, by the hedge line, Chloe had taken the boy's hand and drawn him back toward the fountain. Jessica peeled his shirt off his shoulders while he stood blinking, his dazed smile still fixed on his face, his body already obeying instructions his mind hadn't caught up to.
"Lie back," Chloe told him, pushing him gently onto the grass beside the fountain. He went down without a sound. Chloe knelt astride his chest, facing away from him, and reached back between her own legs. Her cold fingers closed around his cock, already half-hard, slick with Haley's feeding and his own confusion.
"He gets to keep his life," Jessica said, settling on her knees beside them, watching.
"For now." Chloe stroked him slowly, root to crown, her thumb circling the head until he swelled fully rigid and leaked against her knuckles. "Veronica, Haley. Come watch. This is what we do with the ones who don't get turned."
The two newborns drifted over. Haley still had the boy's taste on her lips, and her crimson eyes tracked every motion of Chloe's gloved fist.
The boy groaned, his hips lifting off the grass, thrusting up into Chloe's hand. She let him. She worked him faster, her grip tightening, twisting at the top of each stroke, milking him toward the edge with a bored, practiced patience.
"Is she going to," Haley started.
"No," Jessica said. "She's going to wipe him."
At the fountain, the girl had stopped sucking. She lifted her head from Agnes's wrist, and her eyes were burning crimson, two live coals in the fog. Her fangs slid down past her lower lip, white and delicate, and she moaned around the cock still hammering into her from behind.
"There she is," Agnes whispered.
The girl's body seized. Her claws sprang from her fingertips and gouged the stone rim of the fountain, and her cunt clamped down around Alisha's shaft in a series of hard convulsive squeezes. She came with a scream that no longer sounded human, her hips slamming back to meet every thrust, chasing the pleasure with the mindless urgency of the newborn hunger.
"That's it," Alisha growled. She fucked her through it, driving deep, feeling her own release gather like a struck bell in her gut. "Cum on my cock, sister. Show me what you are now."
Alisha buried herself to the hilt and came, thick pulsing ropes flooding the girl's cunt, running hot down her thighs onto the fountain stone. She stayed pressed deep, grinding through it, until the last spasm faded.
On the grass, the boy bucked up into Chloe's fist with a strangled sound. Chloe pulled her hand away at the last second and let him spend against his own stomach, untouched, spurting helplessly into the cold air.
"Poor thing," she said. She leaned down, her lips brushing his ear. "You met a girl at a fountain. You went home alone. That's all you remember."
She bit into his throat as she said it, a shallow feeding kiss, and drank just enough to fog the last hour out of him. His eyes rolled white. When she lifted her head, he was already snoring softly in the grass, a foolish smile on his face.
"He'll wake up in an hour thinking he fell asleep drunk," Jessica said, pulling his shirt back over his shoulders like she'd done it a hundred times.
The new vampire pushed herself up from the fountain rim on shaking arms. Cum and blood both streaked her thighs, and she looked down at the mess between her legs, then at Agnes, then at Alisha, and smiled with her new fangs.
"What did you give me?" she asked. Her voice was different. Deeper. Hungry.
"Everything," Agnes said. She kissed her forehead, almost gentle. "Welcome to the family. What's your name, little one?"
"Maren," the girl said. Her tongue found one sharp fang and traced it, and her new crimson eyes drifted, inevitably, toward the boy asleep in the grass. Toward the pulse in his throat.
"No," Agnes said, reading her instantly. "Not him. Not tonight."
"Then who?" Maren's stomach growled, loud in the fog. Veronica laughed, high and delighted, and threw her arm around the girl's shoulders.
"Now that," she said, "is the fun part."