A cloud crossed the watery full moon turning the bright night a shade dimmer for a second until it cleared. Dark houses, merely silhouettes to mortal eyes, stood like hollow-eyed sentinels overlooking the suburban avenue. Not that there was much to see. The rain had cleared the streets a little now and only a few people were still about.

A man a little above 20 passed not a dozen feet from her vigil in the shadows. Had he seen her he would no doubt have offered up a lopsided grin and mayhap chanced to wink at her? That was the attitude she had seen most often written in the faces of such deluded predators. If only she could turn the tables. But young men were verboten. Pity that, Amelia thought as she drooled over the broad shouldered boy striding down the street like he owned it. Foolish boy, she giggled to herself, these are not your streets, there are mine.

Amelia leaned back into the shadows and ran indolent fingers through almost blood red hair that hung to her waist. Her once blue eyes now sparkled purplish with polished jet pupils obscuring most of the colour; two holes against the pale of her ash-white complexion.

She was young for one of her kind, having been sired in the dark days of the blitz, an eye-blink ago to the master. She shuddered. Thoughts of him made her once mortal tummy thrill with dread as if she were still a giddy gadabout stealing kisses from Yankee soldiers.

The Dark Father kept her on a tight leash. So many rules and petty guidance’s to make her head spin. He had tutored her well and only one thing could distract her from the iron rails he had set her upon; the one thing that even He was slaved to.

The wind tumbled a paper bag along damp pavements and her cat-like instincts sharpened as if to pounce. Just then another burst of rain rattled like pebbles on slate rooves, each drop separate in her mind as she counted the impacts.

There was water enough to quench an army but it was all dust to Amelia. She had another thirst and it was beginning to hurt. The boy would have been divine but Father had spoken.

So many boys dancing between raindrops, where were the women, Amelia mused? But she knew the answer. It was an old story, where men lorded over pavements women oft cowered in fearful huddles come the fall of night and why not? There was much to fear on such an evening.

*

By the time Amelia saw the girl her throat and lips burned like glass-paper and she was dizzy with desire. This was the testing time, when the thirst seared within her and all rules seemed without meaning. A Levana would have fallen on the young woman and consumed her until nought but a withered husk lay on the pavement. The reason the newly sired were not unleashed in the first days of their turning.

Even Amelia with decades old tempering could scarce hold back now. She doubted she could have held back even in the face of a forbidden boy now. Not that she would ever admit as much.

The Dark Father’s doctrine was such that one of his children was bound by restraint even if a hunt took days. His first rule, do not kill was too easily broken by one in a blood frenzy.

Not that the Dark Father didn’t kill, death was an old friend for him, but in this new age he pursued more subtle arts; a trail of bodies drew too much attention.

Such thoughts were pushed aside as Amelia studied the girl. A blonde in the modern vogue, sprayed carelessly with clinging cloth that accentuated her curves. Amelia hated trousers, especially those that would better serve as an undergarment. She could smell the girl from the shadows, the hot nectar heady above the sheen of cloying perfume and the fashionable attire.

The old-young hunter cocked her feline head to one side and sauntered easily in the black shade of the woman’s form. Silent now she waited until her prey turned the corner and then with hyper-cheetah speed she lunged.

Sweet flesh parted like silk beneath Amelia’s fangs and her mouth filled with potent wine. Claret-like and thick it surged in her now and she drank it down with a thousand images from the startled girl’s mind.

For a long moment they were one and the girl, only dimly aware of current events, fell profoundly in love with her unrealised attacker. This was a feeling that would fade in time, although less quickly than the memory of the encounter. That was unless Amelia decided to renew her contact any time soon. Such dread bonds could bind a mortal forever; if they lived.

Amelia could see the woman’s life pour out before her; like a movie running backwards she saw a recent sun-soaked holiday and an encounter with a man: a lake, a forest, an angry man on street corner. Then little-by-little came books, school classroom lines and that first kiss…

Still Amelia drank, drank until the sacred blood burned within her.

Amelia. Her name whispered in her mind. Amelia, that is enough, it said more insistently.

The images in her head were fading now and Amelia could feel the woman’s heart slow. Oh Lord, she gasped inwardly as she broke contact. For second she thought someone was there. Had someone spoken?

Amelia gained her feet and scanned the row of houses. It had been a reckless move, she knew that now. Then she remembered the girl. Not dead. Not quite. A quick lash of a healing tongue cleared all trace of wounds and then Amelia propped the woman against the wall in a sitting position. As an afterthought she took an empty wine bottle from a container on the nearby doorstep and placed it in her victims lap.

She considered ringing the doorbell before fleeing, but already the groggy woman was coming to. By the time she opened her eyes Amelia was gone.

*

The first hint of fire in the sky itched on Amelia’s skin and she shuddered. To her it was if a mighty volcano was erupting above the city streets, threatening to consume her in a torrent of flames. It was lucky then that the same light outlined the dark building at the far end of the cul-de-sac. She was almost home.

The house was a private hotel. But this one had more rooms below ground than could be seen above. She gained entrance by a side door leading from the back garden, an ancient iron affair at the foot of step gloomy steps and cut into the worn windowless brick.

Not until the door was firmly closed behind her and she stood on the black and white Victorian tiles did she relax. It would be hours before she could sleep, she might even watch some television, she mused as she crept cat-like down the passage to the steps to the under basement and her room.

“Amelia,” oozed a pleasant voice behind her.

She froze.

“Did I give you permission to be out?” the smooth dark voice continued, “I forget.”

The Dark Father forgot nothing. Not the mountains to the sea. Not the rising of the city and the fall of the ancient forest. He had walked with Cesar and danced with the Celts on ancient hills. The recent doings of his child was ever clear in his mind.

Amelia let her mouth hang open like a breathless teen and waited with her back turned to the voice.

“No Father I…” she gulped.

“The woman, does she live?” he pressed her, the oil in his voice more turbulent now as if a storm might break.

How did he know? Amelia winced and slowly, although too fast for her, turned to face him.

Marcus Cornelius Corvus was neither tall nor short. If he had been mortal one might suggest he carried himself with a stocky elegance. Although at first glance he had the bearing of a man not far above 40, his eyes were cold and hard like a wily statesman who had seen the ages.

“She will be fine Father, I covered my tracks and…”

“You lost yourself,” Marcus said with a sudden sharpness.

Amelia considered a protest and dipped her head to study the pattern on the tiles. The black slate and white marble chequers put her in mind of a chessboard, but in this game she was a pawn and he the master.

“I stopped in time,” she muttered in a sullen voice.

“I had to exert my influence,” Marcus countered.

Amelia raised her head and made to snarl a denial.

“Don’t you dare,” he hissed.

Amelia bowed again and this time clasped her hands in front of her in the traditional posture of supplication.

“I should have you impaled for a month or two,” Marcus said wearily, “Or perhaps entomb you for a couple of decades.”

This last threat was an idle one, but at the mention of being impaled her bottom clenched. It was a painful detention and a shaming one. She would be stripped naked and intimately pegged with a thick wooden stake in a humiliating posture to be fed rats’ blood and scraps.

“For going out without permission you are restricted to the house for a month,” he said at last.

Amelia sucked in her cheeks and tried not to blush. This was shame enough and embarrassing before the others. Worse still she would have to wait to be fed, perhaps shamefully from a bowl on the ground while she knelt.

“The other sin is more serious,” Marcus intoned, “Report to my study at sunset. Now go and rest yourself.”

*

Even deep in her room Amelia could feel the sun raging above the house. Usually she was able to sleep through it as only one of her kind could. At other times she lost herself in a book or immersed herself in the wonders of television.  But now she was grounded such recreation was closed to her. Instead she had to wait in her room until it was time to see Marcus.

Whatever happened would not be good, but at least she would escape being impaled. Amelia thought about the last time she had defied him and shuddered. Pain was one thing but her Father knew how to shame and show her how much she still had to learn.

Amelia was still pondering this when the unseen malevolence of the sun shut off like a lamp. She knew that in that moment the last harsh rays of light had fallen below the horizon. Everywhere in the house the children of the night stopped where they were and looked up as if they could see through the very walls. For a few short hours they were free.

For Amelia the usual satisfaction of such time was closed to her and she grimaced. Marcus would be waiting.

“You have walked this Earth for less than a hundred years,” he said as she entered his chamber. As he spoke he stood with his back to the door contemplating a large elaborate oil painting by a long dead artist. “..And yet you think you know better than I.”

“No Father I…” Amelia challenged him.

Marcus held up one hand to silence her as he turned away from the elaborate depiction of the Rape of the Sabine’s.

“I am so disappointed with you,” he sighed. “And so I must punish you.”

Amelia gulped.

“And since you insist on acting like a child I will punish you as one,” he said sharply as he turned to face her.

Amelia was wearing a knee-length skirt from the decade she had been turned and over it she wore a tight sweater from the decade that followed it. Instead of hanging free her dark red hair was now smartly piled up in a way that hadn’t been fashionable for 50 years or so. She hoped that the demure look would also equal contrition.

“You may leave the upper woollen garment on but remove everything else below the waist,” Marcus said.

As he spoke he opened a drawer in the desk to retrieve a Mason Pearson hairbrush from within. It was a stylish implement of the kind her long dead mortal mother might once have used.

“I knew you might… wh-whip me,” Amelia said thickly, “But w-what are you going to do with that… I mean…”

“I am going to bare your bottom and put you across my knee for a good sound spanking,” Marcus told her.

“B-but you can’t I’m… please Marcus that’s too embarrassing,” Amelia wailed, unfamiliar tears pricking at her eyes.

“Not as embarrassing as standing outside my study door facing the wall with your hands on your head,” he told her, “Not as embarrassing as reporting to me every evening for a month after spending the day running errands with a well-spanked bare bottom on show.”

Amelia’s eyes were wide and she allowed a single tear of shame to roll down one cheek.

“The bristles have been treated with garlic and a few swats with it will insure that you do not heal before you learn,” he said.

Amelia’s nose crinkled at the reeking odour as he beckoned her.

“You have not yet disrobed,” Marcus observed dryly.

Her Father’s knee was firm and hard as she was tipped across it in the traditional manner. Worse still the door had been left wide open and each of her brethren on the way to hunt got to cast a variously dismissive or smirking glance at her upturned bare bottom as they passed.

Of course Amelia had the resilience and the stamina of her kind. But Marcus’s was greater and in a quarter of an hour she could no longer hold back the flood of tears. By the time the last of the hunters had past the door she was bawling as much as she had as a teenager back before the late war.

“Please Marcus, please I’m sorry… so sorry,” she sobbed.

“Hush my child, hush, this could take a while, you have a hard lesson to learn,” her Father soothed.

*

It had been a long night and half of it had been spent nose to the wall in passage by the main entrance. By then of course Amelia had checked her tears and was wearied by her ordeal, but that had been the easy part. For now at regular intervals the door opened as in twos and threes her brethren and elder sisters slunk back from their hunt barely pausing to regard her shame; such cruel siblings and cousins in blood.

Her well displayed bare bottom still ached and burned and would do so for days to come. A long night had ended and so would begin a miserable day…