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The Red Lady

The lipstick was slick and cool against her lips as she painted it on carefully, her attention locked onto her reflection in the enchanted mirror. It was the colour of the blood she was cursed to drink, and it matched nearly everything about her, from the dramatic eye makeup she had painted on earlier, to the locks of her hair – dyed, of course; not even a vampire could manage to get blood-red hair naturally.

There was a knock at the door, and her dark eyes slid to look in that direction. She didn’t turn her head or lower her mirror, just stole a glimpse of the handmaiden as she went to answer it.

“Milady,” the girl said breathlessly. “It is your husband.”

She lowered the lipstick and replaced it on her dressing table. “Let him in,” she commanded. “And leave us.”

She angled her mirror to watch as her husband swept in and the girl slipped out. She met the eyes of the older vampire – dark and rarely warm with affection – through the reflection of the silvered glass and smiled. She lowered it, and turned in her head to speak to him over her shoulder, knowing what he would see in her profile, and knowing that her charms still held him by her side.

Theirs had been a romance caught up in a dance of power. He had been entranced by the Chinese girl and her mind; she with his power and the freedom he had offered. Now neither was sure which of them was the more powerful – she had grown quickly under his tutelage – nor which was the one more hunted by humans.

“Well?” she asked. She could feel his eyes tracing the angles and planes of her face, and she looked up at him from the corner of her eye.

“They have been dealt with,” he replied smoothly, his deep voice washing over her. She smiled and stood, brushing down the skirts of her maroon satin dress. She stepped around her chair, facing him fully for the first time, and she watched as his eyes dropped from her face to study the white swell of her breasts, pushed up by her corset.

“The villagers will not be happy,” she mused as she walked towards him.

“They never are,” he pointed out.

He was right, of course. Their dissention caused a lot of trouble for her and her husband, starting from the day he married her. A “foreign whore” for their distant Lord had not been what the women of the village had wanted three hundred years previously; they would have preferred him to have sought his pleasures closer to home. It had escalated in the centuries since, leading up to the events of that very evening, when a team of vampire hunters had breached their walls.

She smiled at him. There was blood at the corner of his mouth – he always had been a messy eater – and on the collar of his shirt, and the smell of it made her mouth water. Reaching his side she leaned up, pressing the slender length of her body against his, and licked it away. She smiled indulgently when he looked down at her, surprised, perhaps, by her boldness.

He offered her his arm, and when she took it, he pressed a kiss to her plump, crimson lips. She pressed back, briefly, before pulling away; she didn’t want to ruin the perfection of her make up until considerably later in the night, after all.

“Shall we, my Lady?” he asked.

She nodded; giving no verbal reply to his question. The village would suffer this night for their nerve; she would make sure of that.