Redeemers of the Fallen

The black stone chapel had been buried beneath the sand of this great desert for almost two millennia until recently a slow erosion unpacked the gathered dust and detritus of time to reveal the existence of this hallowed sanctuary. Several feet of sand were still piled up against the outside walls of the church and even after a complete excavation of the interior a thin film of coarse grain permeated the floors and furniture of the religious hall.

This church originated from the earliest era of Christianity when adherents to that faith still practiced monotheistic forms of mysticism and shamanism. Those early adopters to the burgeoning religion once possessed the wherewithal to deal with creatures such as the one Mirela delivered here and she planned to utilize the inherited knowledge and sanctity of this church. Mirela took care to cover every single cross and religious symbol visible within the chapel though it burned her fingertips and retinas to do so. She felt nervous almost to the point of hyperventilation being here. This was after all the first time Mirela had stepped inside any kind of church or holy place in nearly four hundred years.

The Beast roared angrily at Mirela and fought against the invisible bonds holding it fast to the altar. How did this pathetic witch, this vampiric bitch, learn my Hellname? Zzazzazural ranted in Mirela's mind. Names, especially true ones, were powerful things in the demonic realms and to share your eponym with another was tantamount to relinquishing all control to them. The ferocious demon snarled in frustration and thrashed harder against Mirela's enchantment but with its name binding it in place the Beast couldn't break free.

Mirela's body slicked wet with a nervous sweat that soaked through her spandex dress. Such perspiration was a rarity for her considering her usual unwavering poise plus the chronic chill she always endured during that interminable time between feedings. One momentary lapse in concentration and her binding spells would be interrupted, releasing the monstrous demon who would almost assuredly tear Mirela limb from limb before consuming her flesh while she still lived. Probably smiling the whole time while it did so too.

Mirela breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed her tightly sprung body as she concluded the incantation with a final wave of her hand. She stood back and observed with intense intrigue whether the ritual actually worked. Mirela learned the correctly process for performing an exorcism from ancient Hebrew and Christian texts but since this particular spell was a heavily modified version of that infamous rite she only hoped she had executed the hundreds of steps properly and in the right order. Mirela couldn't overstate how strange it was for her to be performing a spell based upon white magic rather than black, though the source of Mirela's power remained infernal in nature.

The Beast ceased its frantic thrashing and stared upward while its chest rose and fell with rapid, heavy breaths. Mirela covered her ears as the creature suddenly bellowed loud enough to shake the walls of the church and rattle the stained-glass windows. The demon rolled and flailed anew but now with a bright red light glowing through the platelets between the sizable mounds of its chest. The Beast lifted into the air by its chest and pelvis while its bound limbs remained pinned to the altar. The red light slowly withdrew from the Beast's form and floated into the air high above as the demon slumped back down to the altar.

The glowing light flashed on and off faster and faster as it swirled in the air with a thin red mist now surrounding it. The blinking dot shrank progressively smaller and smaller until the glowing diminutive bead could have fit between the palms of Mirela's hands. Mirela made a motion with her fingers like she was snuffing out a candle and the red light disappeared with only a silent scream that Mirela felt rather than heard announcing her triumph over the Beast. Even plunged into sudden darkness the sanctuary seemed brighter now that the evil spirit had been exorcised though not entirely banished.

"Please let this work," Mirela prayed for the first time in centuries. "Please, for the love of God."

The creature's black eyes fluttered open and looked about the sanctuary with confusion before they settled upon Mirela standing before the twisted body on the altar. The expression on the Beast's face softened and almost looked human when it recognized her. Mirela heard it speak with a pure, sweet, chiming voice rather than the snarling rasp it cursed Mirela with earlier. It was a voice Mirela thought she would never hear again.

"Mellie?"

Mirela gasped and her breath caught as Bianca uttered her old childhood nickname. She swallowed the nervous lump that had stuck in her gullet and answered her.

"I'm here, Bianca. Don't be afraid."

"Oh, Mellie," Bianca wept. "It's so good to hear your voice again."

Mirela released her binding spell and crouched down to comfort and embrace Bianca while she sobbed inconsolably against Mirela's shoulder. Feeling Bianca's strong arms wrapped around her again made Mirela's blackened, undead heart feel alive for the first time since... well, probably since her and Bianca last embraced all those years ago.

Portions of the demon's carapace had already begun to flake away, revealing soft, pink skin underneath the cracked, crumbling armor. The majority of the red skin masking Bianca's visage had already dissolved to reveal a gorgeous young face that looked just like an angel's. Bianca had used the old Romanian dialect to converse with Mirela, a form of language Mirela hadn't uttered in several human lifetimes.

Please don't let this be another foul demon's trick, Mirela prayed. Please let this be for real.

"Mellie, I feel such terrible pain."

"I know, Bianca. I promise it will pass soon."

Bianca disentangled herself from Mirela's arms and gently pushed her away. She slowly sat up and inspected the interior of the sanctuary, her every movement odd-looking and awkward from exhibiting such human traits while she remained in a shell mostly infernal in composition. Bianca reached up and brushed her fingers against one of the curled horns twisting out of the side of her head before fearfully snatching her hand back down to her side.

"Where are we?" Bianca asked with a shiver. "How did we get here?"

"That is a very long story. Too long to tell in one night. What's the last thing you can clearly remember?"

Bianca thought for a moment.

"We were in a castle. You, Loredana, Bela, and I. Castle Sidexes was the cursed name. A dark place full of horrors unimaginable. I left in the night to search for Loredana after she disappeared but only found vampires and ghouls instead. I always thought those old stories of the undead were the most idiotic nonsense..."

"Anything else?" Mirela gently prodded.

"I managed to kill that decrepit old Count named Turenau but was captured for my efforts. Oh Mellie, they did such terrible things to me. Things I don't want to speak of..."

Bianca started to weep again, her thick black tears running down her hybrid human and demon face to stain the hands covering her shame and sorrow.

"You don't have to speak of anything unpleasant," Mirela assured her as she massaged the back of Bianca's neck. "You don't even have to remember. That's all in the past now. Let's leave it there and move on."

"After that night, I recall nothing," Bianca hesitated before continuing. "Except... I see these flashes of memory from afterward where I'm committing the most wretched, detestable acts again and again. Violence, murder, rape, cannibalism, corruption. It feels like I watched helplessly while someone else forced my body to perform these horrific misdeeds. I... I don't think I've been myself for a long while, Mellie."

"Truer than you know," Mirela said. "Now let's get you off this altar. You need to rest."

"Yes," Bianca agreed sleepily. "Rest..."

Mirela helped lift her weakened sister off the altar and practically carried her to the corner where Mirela had already laid out a sleeping bag, blanket, and pillow just in case her fortune turned this evening. Bianca sighed happily as she laid down in the bag and rested her weary head on the pillow. Mirela tucked her sister inside the sleeping bag then zipped up her covering before throwing the blanket over her.

Mirela felt a twinge in her dead heart as she gazed adoringly at the comforted, content look on Bianca's gorgeous face. Was this electricity pulsing through her veins and heating her blood the thrill of sexual excitement? The surging emotions of requited love? Mirela couldn't remember the last time she'd been so affected by the sight of another. Bianca was here! She was truly returned!

"I always thought I would be the one to save you," Bianca murmured dreamily as she wavered in the struggle between her half-waking and half-sleeping states. "I dreamed of becoming your heroine so you might finally love me the way I loved you. The way I've yearned for since I was a child in awe of her beautiful older sister. Instead you were the who saved me, Mellie. I love you so very much. I've missed you terribly."

Bianca started weeping again, her dark tears falling down her face like rivulets of ruined makeup. Mirela couldn't remember her sister ever being this emotional but then again Mirela struggled to recall any details of her family prior to her turning. She couldn't even begin to imagine the indescribable trauma Bianca had endured these many years but no matter how fragile Bianca's state of mind Mirela vowed to use all her means to help Bianca overcome the damage inflicted upon her psyche.

"I love you too, Bianca," Mirela replied as she soothed her tired sister with gentle strokes over her face and hair. "You have no idea how badly I missed you too. But there's no need to cry any more, my love. I promise we'll never again be apart. Forever we shall love and take care of each other. Is that not wonderful?"

The first whisper of a smile formed on Bianca's cracked lips. The black skin surrounding her mouth was already peeling away to reveal luscious pink buds that enticed Mirela every time they pursed together.

"We will rest here for one day," Mirela told her sister though she suspected Bianca wasn't lucid enough to understand anything she said. "Then tomorrow night we are moving on."

Mirela waited patiently until Bianca was fully asleep before retrieving a pack of syringes from a nearby knapsack. Bianca fidgeted and whimpered when Mirela stuck the needle in her arm but she was too far gone to be stirred awake by its prickled bite. Mirela depressed the plunger until the entire contents of the syringe had been injected into Bianca's vein. The vial contained a carefully measured sedative with the precise dosage necessary to keep Bianca asleep for fifteen or more hours. After all, it simply wouldn't do to have Bianca up and wandering around on her own while Mirela slept below. There was too much her sister didn't understand yet and Mirela had to ensure that Bianca's acclimation to this new world was carefully controlled.

"Sleep well, my beautiful darling," Mirela sighed as she caressed Bianca's hair and hummed a lullaby from their childhood into her ear. "My heart's one true desire."

Bianca's hair gradually felt less rough and wiry as Mirela stroked her sister's tresses and she was convinced if she worked the strands between her fingers long enough the antennae-like strings would dissolve into the golden locks of radiant hair that Mirela once adored. Bianca's recovery was progressing faster than Mirela expected. One of the platelets on her left shoulder had crumbled and fallen off completely to reveal pale, pink-tinged skin beneath. Mirela stared down at her slumbering sibling and realized she still had yet to fully contend with the fact that after centuries of the most painful and desperate yearning the greatest love of Mirela's life had been restored and was now lying naked before her.

Mirela's reverie was interrupted when a beam of early morning sunlight broke precariously through the blue-shaded shard of the stained-glass window in the east section of the sanctuary. The errant ray expanded outward and filtered through the chapel as Mirela fearfully observed its slow, persistent migration. Before jumping to her feet, Mirela kissed Bianca on the pink skin next to her eyebrow and smiled at the familiar snoring and wheezing coming from her sister. She kept to the edges of the chapel to avoid the sunlight beaming into the sanctuary until she reached the staircase leading down into the crypt.

Mirela felt much more at home down here among the dusty, cobwebbed stones and monoliths and the dessicated skeletons of acolytes who had been dead for millennia. Now that she had privacy, Mirela undid the clasp on the back of her dress and peeled the bloody, skintight fabric down her chest and back before pulling down hard on the hem to rip the rest of her clothing off. She inspected the damage leftover from her battle with the Beast and tut-tutted over the claw marks that left sizable gashes across the middle of one of her favorite dresses.

Mirela wore only her knee-high lace-up boots and a sexy piece of lacey black panties beneath that shredded dress which made it easy for her to inspect the deep scratches across her abdomen right below where the claw marks on her ruined dress had been. Fortunately the lycra fabric soaked up most of the blood from that surface wound but if those claws dug just a little deeper into her gut Mirela would have been dragging her intestines back here along with the Beast. Always such a bother when that happens, those things spill everywhere. There were additional gashes along both her arms and across her right thigh but those wounds weren't serious enough to warrant more than a mention. Mirela just needed a heavy dose of rejuvenating plasma and she would be fully restored by the time she woke tomorrow evening.

While nowhere close to the largest pair of tits in the world (she had always been woefully undersized compared to her buxom sisters) Mirela's perky breasts performed healthy lifts and bounces as she went to retrieve the case she left secreted inside one of the ancient coffins. The interior of this custom-made case was preserved with advanced thermal technology but rather than keeping the contents cold, the case was designed instead to maintain the warm temperatures of several IV bags filled with blood as if the nourishing plasma had just recently been drained from the living.

Once Mirela formulated her theory that the Beast's chosen lair was hidden in one of these Middle Eastern deserts she soon learned of this recently unearthed chapel. The dig site in and around the church was excavated by a company owned by Mirela and another one of her corporations negotiated an agreement with the Jordanian government that ensured all research undertaken at the ancient temple would be conducted by a private team of archaeologists. That team of course consisted of a single individual who only worked by night.

Since then Mirela had been using this remote ruin as her base of operations while she hunted the Beast, only returning here periodically to feed and to sleep in safety during the daytime. With the sparse, treacherous conditions of this vast desert surrounding her for fifty miles in every direction, there was no guarantee Mirela could scrounge up enough fresh food to sustain herself. As was her nature, Mirela undertook all necessary precautions to ensure her own survival.

Fortunate indeed that I finally encountered the Beast on this of all evenings, Mirela thought as she unsealed the stopper on her last bag of blood. I was so close to abandoning this quest out of necessity.

Mirela could last quite a few days without feeding but she would gradually grow weaker over time and doubtless would not have survived combat with the Beast if her strength was depleted. Besides, Mirela had her own reasons for such haste. Her countless plots and machinations were coming to fruition far more quickly than the patient, overly cautious vampire-witch ever planned on.

Mirela raised the stopper to her mouth and tipped the bag back. She sucked greedily from the IV bag until the plastic sack was deflated and empty. A sense of relief and an almost orgasmic release penetrated Mirela's steely countenance as she lost herself to hunger and bloodlust. She groaned and swallowed with loud, sensual satisfaction as her depleted veins were rejuvenated with an infusion of live-sustaining blood.

This wasn't exactly the gourmet meal Mirela was used to enjoying. Nothing could compare with the succulent treat of fresh, hot blood drawn directly from her victim's twitching, ejaculating, barely-living body. These leftovers tasted more like weeks-old stale bread but Mirela hungered powerfully enough that she didn't mind the slightly stagnant flavor.

After Mirela finished gulping down the entire liquid contents of the bag she leaned back against the stone wall with a loud, relaxed groan and then exhaled a belch and a satisfied sigh. Mirela felt drunk and full but she sobered quickly as an intense sense of shame and revulsion twisted her stomach. She was disgusted at what she'd become and disgraced by how much she came to enjoy this fraudulent immortality trapped within her sick, monstrous form. Mirela closed her eyes and felt so tired... so very tired of everything.

Mirela used her innate sense of direction to gain her bearings then opened her eyes and looked straight up at the arches of the dark stone ceiling. Directly above the spot she fixated upon the sun was shining brightly upon this accursed world. Mirela hadn't seen true daylight in nearly half a millennia.

"So what, is my faith finally being rewarded?" Mirela asked. She wasn't sure who she was speaking to at first. "For the first time in my gross abomination of a life? Is this some sort of cruel joke?"

Mirela squinted upward and imagined the sun's rays shimmering over her undead body, burning her perverted semblance of life all away and leaving nothing but purified ash and dust behind. Probably the fate she deserved after her countless crimes.

"Does this mean that after ignoring me throughout my rape, abuse, and corruption you're actually answering my prayers now? Why don't you go fuck yourself?"

+++++ Chapter II: A Doll's Eyes +++++

Meanwhile, at Sidexes...

"I do believe our beloved Queen has gone rogue," Eduard Şarpe remarked to Loredana Turenau, formerly Loredana Pierocent.

Loredana lounged lazily upon a couch older than most nations of this world. She fidgeted with a remote control while she absentmindedly flipped between television channels playing on an excessively-sized monitor mounted to the stone wall on the east side of one of the castle's minor feasting halls. The artfully-woven tapestries, opulent floor-spanning rugs, gold-encased mantles, and exquisitely-crafted antique furniture screamed fabulous wealth.

At the Dark Queen Mirela's specific direction, Sidexes had undergone an unbelievable transformation during the last few decades. The imposing black gates and twisted, incomprehensibly architected spires remained of course, those features inextricable to the nature of Sidexes. But gone were those tired old torches in gothic braziers that lined the endless hallways. The same with the cracked mortar, the cobwebs, the rats, bats, and other vermin. Overhead fluorescent lighting (not ultraviolet of course) kept the halls of Sidexes lit during all hours of the day. A satellite dish and cell tower on the summit of a nearby mountaintop provided the remote castle with modern forms of communication to reach the outside world.

The Dark Lord spare us if that feed ever cuts out during one of Loredana's soaps, Şarpe grumbled internally.