"Feel them, breathe them in, all but your last!" she panted, hands closing around my ears, sharp lush mouth planting on mine. The breath of a goddess poured down my throat and splashed against the walls of my lungs like a squall, mingling her silvered air with mine. Though I had witnessed her truth upon the beguiling serpent's back I now felt it, not as evidence, but as an assertion of hers that I trusted.

My own hands dove into her furs and searched for her waist, seeming to journey for a month before finally finding it. They clasped about her magnetically, but she could not be pulled closer than she already was without being one flesh. Sable tickled my silhouette here, there, somewhere unexpected, somewhere impossible.

What she imparted empowered me, but all the while our carnal writhing did something else. It escorted me to new summits of pleasure, thinned my thoughts with a hot, voluminous, expanding, swallowing, billowing, blooming, charcoal smoke cloud of euphoria. It is entirely possible that within it a climax occurred, but if it did its traditional form was lost in a crowd of others exclaiming their novelty.

Within our embrace I experienced a climax of touch on my fingertips, sable like licks of flame, transitioning to her hair without my knowledge, and to the frizzly tufts over her ears which my fingers either wrapped around or were bound by. A climax of taste occurred in our kiss, where the flavor of her pent up passion and craving had notes of honeysuckle and oak heartwood.

These bumped shoulder to shoulder with my other competing senses. A climax of scent in my nose as I inhaled the experience on her skin and trapped in her furs. I intrinsically knew how far she'd traveled to board my train, how most of it was dense forest, and how she'd slept in a bed of leaves she convinced to turn red and fall with nothing but her demanding eyes.

A climax of vision as her face eclipsed the lamplight repeatedly. My Venus was only more beautiful up close. The bundles of freckles pinned against the bridge of her nose by her eyes were so richly brown that they were now the aerial view of a noble countryside after a rain had taken the shallow roots of the new green. Her thick reddish eyebrows proved their luscious appearance when her forehead glided across mine between kisses.

What we had just achieved together was the perfect inverse of her founding violence. Rather than taking my life in one bludgeoning blink she had shared hers with me, and so stretched time upon the rack of a pleasure so thoroughly indecent that I immediately understood why no history books told of such relationships as ours. They were obscene to the civilized mind, but an experiential cathedral of every vaunted color in the spectrum to the senses.

As I recovered and felt every bullet of sweat standing its ground on my hide I recognized something about her retreating face. In superficial appearance we were the same age, but her features moved with more give and more knowledge. My Wanda was older than she appeared, from which I deduced the year had to be later than 1849, but now knew to keep my little investigations to myself, in the same locked drawer as that final disobedient breath of mine.

"Oh Severin, we are going to make each other so happy... once the obstacles are cleared." With that she was crossing the lapels of my coat over my chest, a coat I had not been wearing moments prior. At no point did my back leave the seat. My Venus in furs continued to demonstrate her uncanny abilities, as she passed one billowing sleeve of sable over me and I was suddenly presentable: free of sweat, hair in order, clothes without wrinkle.

"Where is Ruthven?" I asked, my task rushing to the forefront like a standing coffin out of a fog bank.

"Behind us, in the dining car. He has surely cleared it of everyone he couldn't corral and ensnare in such a short time. You will need this." Wanda's hand disappeared into her furs, into the space where she kept truth and horror and garb alike, and withdrew a thick wooden stake still smelling of sawdust.

"Good lord."

"Your lord prefers to be called Wanda," she corrected me, sliding the item into my coat and patting it into place, almost solemnly, like a wife about to send her husband off to war. Then she slid off my legs and stood, waiting for me to do the same. I obeyed swiftly, only to flinch when I saw that I was the taller of us by about a shot glass.

I don't know why it surprised me, as nothing about her was giant save her aura. My Wanda looked up at me, running her hand across my cheek; I swear I felt every swirl on every fingertip and each crease of her palm as if they were canyons.

"Remember my love," she said, eyes locking so that I might calibrate my position in the world from theirs, "that he will use servants in his efforts just as I do. Do not let Ruthven bite you. Do not look into his eyes. Only a blow to his heart will fell him, and once completed do not remove the stake from his chest."

"I understand. I love you Wanda Pelts."

"And I you Severin. Now bring this train into the station so we can disembark with dignity, begin our reign with a romantic stroll across a clean slate." I took one final look at my goddess, disbelief far behind me, appreciation and affection seemingly endless. If she had disappeared at that very moment I still would've spent the rest of my life periodically looking up from whatever task was at hand and admonishing myself for letting it happen.

To step away from the center of my world was painful, even disorienting, but once I was in the narrow passage between all the doors it helped me get my bearings. The journey to the dining car was not far, but much changed about me with each additional step that separated me from Wanda's overwhelming presence.

It came to me that I had essentially been sitting in a car that was consumed by fire and somehow not been burned, or that my perception had been so distorted that I had mistaken the pain of injury for the height of pleasure. But if I had been injured I was just as quickly healed, by the hand of my goddess.

Her power over me faded, but my trust in her did not. Nor did my desire to be with her, to assist her in everything she sought to do. Only, she had ordered me to kill. Severin Molochi was no killer, even of eldritch monsters squeezed into human skins. Such an order immediately pushed me into my last breath, the disobedient one, the one that had to betray my oath to Wanda to keep my identity, and likely my body as well, living.

She had to know this, had to have learned it in her assessment when she nearly twisted my heart out of my chest. Now that the haze of her command had dissipated I saw her desperation. She had no better plan, and if there had been time she would've staged this conflict somewhere else, certainly not such an enclosed space containing two gods that could do battle but only slay their surrounding subjects.

If Wanda was desperate, perhaps even her version of frightened, then it was my duty to settle her mind. That did not have to be done with a wooden stake, at least not initially, and not according to the last breath Severin Molochi would ever take.

Armed only with my typical easygoing smile, I gently opened the sliding door to the dining car and found it empty of all but three people. Or, two people and a god. Those like myself were a man and a woman, casually sat across from each other in a little booth as if they were just having coffee, scones, and a chat.

Between them were plates and cups, but both empty and bone dry. Now they were but table decorations, for those sat there were changed as I was, and thought all their nutrition would flow from their master. Each was younger than myself, and the man younger than the woman, enough so that I thought it unlikely they were a couple before they were united here, under the bat wing of Ruthven.

The woman had to twist to look at me, and in her dark but sparkling eyes I saw the same estimations that certainly lit up mine. We each saw what we now looked like, having been transformed from spiritual nomad into a disciple of Cain. There were thin red marks on her earlobe, distinct enough that I saw a cross pattern.

A christian perhaps, wearing crucifix earrings. The moment she had converted they had burned her flesh, not because the god of Christ was true, but because the parts of Ruthven now running through her veins rejected such opposing symbols.

Through her nearly platinum ringlets I spied the man, the more nervous of the two. Cynically, I immediately judged him as the more vulnerable should things come to conflict. He had the largest gap to cross in turning himself over to a new god, not because of a prior obligation to the Christ, or the Buddha, or Hanuman, or any other, but because of the intimacy between heirs of Cain and Abel.

The heirs did not pretend they were immune to human vice and flaw, at least Wanda did not, merely claiming their expressions of such things were inherently better, colored as they were by ultimate truths of scale and significance. So when we were united there was an automatic element of love, and one nearly as automatic of sex.

My personal taste has always been strongly for women, so there was no hurdle when Wanda entered my car. Our relationship was always a possibility. But this fellow's expression suggested that his newfound love for Ruthven conflicted with his love of women. I don't know if he understood it as clearly as I did, but there was no conflict. They were gods, and we were but men. That gap transcends all matters of form and biological function.

Careful I needed to be, I reminded myself. Already I was assuming things about Ruthven based on my interactions with Wanda, but there was no reason this new creature had to be as kind and understanding as she. In the end, despite her instincts, she had asked for my participation, for love rather than addiction, and Ruthven might not have done so. He might have taken what he could. The fangs of the vampire seemed a much better tool for that taking than the impish thorns in my Wanda's nipping smile.

"Lovely that you've decided to join us," Ruthven said, standing across from his subjects, behind a bar. In his hands was a cocktail shaker. An empty glass with a tall delicate stem sat on the bar in front of him, waiting for him to finish and grant it an identity.

Wanda had warned not to look in his eyes, which was difficult to do. It felt like there were ropes tied to mine, pulling them toward his, a sensation I combated by circling around his face and observing everything else. He wore a purple smoking jacket, and there were many black rings upon his fingers. As close as I got to his eyes was the slick strand of hair, long and red, dangling off one side of his face.

"I was hoping we could settle all this in a civil manner," I said, probing for Wanda's presence behind me now that Ruthven's filled the room. The carpet was like gooseflesh under my feet, even through my shoes. The fog on the window was his very breath, which was itself graveyard mist.

"Hmm. That's certainly not what she told you to do," Ruthven said in a silken oily voice, like the pour of walnut oil on fuzzy wood. "Come, have a seat, and a drink. Liset made it herself." He tapped the bar, next to the glass. The woman, now known as Liset, smiled falsely. I wasn't sure how she had made me a drink, given that Ruthven had the shaker and the glass was empty.

"You'll understand why I can't put my back to your friends there," I said, sitting on the stool at the end of the bar rather than the one between the vampire and his servants.

"I know the reason, but it's not a position I understand. Any desire to be further from me than necessary is an abnormality. You suffer under her perversion. One look at me and you would be quenched, now and forever." Certainly he saw that my eyes were fixed on the couple. That only changed when I heard the shaker open, my eyes drifting to look but refusing to angle higher.

What I saw was most curious. When he tilted to pour nothing emerged, yet the glass did fill, from the bottom up as if it had struck oil. Initially it appeared to be red wine, but it was too thick, and the red too assertive. That was when a tiny moan sent my eyes back to Liset, who had closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. Tendons in her neck strained against the skin, her head lolling to one side.

Another parlor trick. Ruthven used her body not just as his property, but for show. This poor young woman was fuel for a party, and I didn't doubt the vampire was the sort of god who took from his servants until there was no more to take, then discarded the husk that might have had life in it yet.

The heir of Cain slid the full glass down to me, the object stopping precisely under my nose without sloshing a single drop. I was eager to prove I was not intimidated by his tactics, not with the fierce Wanda curled up in my heart, so I looked down at the blood offering. But I was deceived.

It was not my face reflected in its calm red surface, but that of Ruthven Typhus Andronicus. The hypnotic power of his eyes was not lessened through the blood, causing me to nearly lose my composure and smash the glass with my forehead. Only an invisible claw held my head aloft, planted by Wanda in one gale of her mighty typhoon kiss.

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The vampire was of course a handsome creature, expression soft, cheeks pale, youthful nose nearly reflecting lamplight, but all that was secondary to the drunkenness applied to victims of his gaze. This heir of Cain was something that came over you, like a miasma, or the first sneeze of a long head cold, rather than the stalking approach of Ms. Pelts.

I reeled. Straight off the stool and into one of the booths. Head spinning. Yet that was a partial victory. Ruthven had not hypnotized me; instead I had imagined Wanda's face right next to his, and the two had immediately done battle. It was their tumbling scrape that made my head spin, and if not for it I would be locked in a descent into the vampire's vacuum.

I couldn't see straight, but I could hear just fine. People scrambled over booths. Closer. Clambering like squirrels in need of a claw trim. And under that the sound of someone much more agile passing over the bar, pants just grazing the wood. They were closing in. Two to hold my arms and one to push my head aside and expose my neck. It became my hope that my pacifist spirit would forgive me for not allowing it to come to that.

With athletic flourish that would've spilled me onto the floor on any day prior I sprang out of the booth and extracted the stake from my coat, brandishing it in one hand like a rapier, for a few fencing lessons were my only brushes with violence.

No doubt I was far below the visual threshold of a significant threat, but it must be remembered that the heirs of Cain were not pulling from the soldiery currently, just ordinary train passengers, and Lyset and her companion were no more prepared for this battle than myself. Both of them froze at the sight of my weapon, and each was perched upon the back of a booth like a cat with bristled back.

Ruthven had of course assessed the strength of his own weapons, and was prepared for them to falter. Rather than charge at me directly while I wielded the wooden stake he moved from the floor to the booths, jacket suddenly billowing like the tail of a ghost, and landed on the back of the young man in his thrall.

"Shield your master Burton," the vampire ordered, his words turning into a yawn that exposed his hideous fangs: long, curved, and hollow, like sabers turned into champagne flutes. Both needles of ivory sank into Burton's shoulder blade, far enough down and back that if I were to strike I would certainly have to hit the human shield first.

And that was very much how this god intended to use the poor fellow. The bite infused him with monstrous influence, a darkly enlightening display of the same power that so enriched my embrace with Wanda. Burton's skin turned a stark gray-blue like ice over a headstone. Fog swept into his eyes. His own mouth stretched unnaturally open and he was forced to grow fangs not meant for biting, but for battle, swords to cross with mine.

Now puppeted by a creature with plenty of hunting experience, the Burton-ghoul climbed down and ran at me, arms outstretched. If the courage to strike down my fellow man was somewhere inside me, it had not yet reared its head, so I retreated and found the entrance to the bar. I put myself behind it, hoping the wall of bottles behind me would prevent me from getting surrounded.

As mount Burton and rider Ruthven crawled onto the bar Liset scurried alongside it to find my back. Even with the vampire refusing to fight for himself it was still two against one, and victory seemed impossible. Yet there had to be a way. My Wanda would not have sent me into this chilly hell without confidence. Her love was presumptuous, but if it was not genuine, did not truthfully cherish me, then I had already miscalculated so badly that my death was deserved.

She knew I was no soldier, and so expected me to use my cleverness. My sense of people. A sense that perhaps extended to the heirs of Cain. To bolster my nerve I thought about how I might have even seen the swing of the rock coming, were I in Abel's place, and duck to avoid it.

What did I know of Ruthven that could be exploited? How did he differ from Wanda? As terrifying as it sounded, Wanda was like her mother. She was a beast, a matron of the wood, and took what she wanted the way a bear takes honey despite a cloud of bees. When she can't acquire the prize she moves on in a huff and begins to forage anew.

But not the vampire. He sprang traps, and he sprang them in polite conversation. You turned your back and you were bitten, or your eyes fell upon him and you were doomed. Just as Wanda's will had squeezed its way into my soul, Ruthven's traps and tricks were left open, avenues for influence and life to pass between him and his thralls.

It was a wild theory, cockamamie incarnate, but my situation was desperate enough to act on it, as desperate as Wanda was when she sent a poetry-loving tailor into battle with a blood-drinking dark god.

Lyset passed behind the glass of blood that still sat on the bar untouched. Breaking it might break the spell, so rather than bat at it with the stake I reached out with my hand and turned it over, spilling its contents across the bar and onto the floor. One glass worth of blood poured out. Then two. Three. On the fourth she understood.

It had been filled from her font in an attempt to distract, impress, and horrify, which were all the same to Ruthven. That connection remained open, so much so that by the time she lunged to right the glass she'd lost too much to maintain consciousness. Her reaching hand faltered as she collapsed to her knees and paled.

Her paleness was about to become far more intense, supernaturally so, for the vampire was unwilling to let his numbers advantage disappear. The creature detached from Burton, billowed across the bar, and swung his body around Liset's shoulders onto her back. He was much too large to weight that little, but the more concerning magic was in his teeth.

They sank into the woman's shoulder so that she underwent the same transformation to blue skin and teeth so terrible they were more like walrus tusks. Godly speed was on his side, but the transfer still took precious seconds. I would not waste them.

Burton was dazed by the sudden absence of his master, his body quickly returning to its natural state. With my free hand I took a bottle of rum from the shelf behind me and swung it straight into the man's cheek with all the force I could muster. It broke on impact, leaving a shard of glass in his face and several expensive drinks in his eyes.

The blow knocked him unconscious, and luckily the undead influence of his master did not allow him to stay on his feet as some sort of concussed somnambulist. Once he fell to the floor I turned my attention back to Lyset and her vampire jockey.

Now was their moment, while I was still turning back, so the dual creature lunged over the bar, grabbing at my coat with claws that grew longer by the second. Her chest was on the bar. Ruthven was far more exposed in that position, and all I had to do was disregard the teeth as big as antlers about to skewer me to the wall.

The fangs were set at wide angles, so I grabbed one by the middle, praying only the tip was sharp, and forced it off to the side, knowing the other would be too wide to slash me. Then my stake hand slipped between Lyset's shoulder and Ruthven's breast. It was an unworkable angle to pierce him, but the mere touch of the wood startled him so that he lifted his chest in indecision.

They had failed their moment, but I would not fail mine. I did not know the year, but I knew precisely what every second without Wanda by my side was, and they were damn near intolerable. I used one to pull the stake back just enough to thrust it again, this time through his jacket and into his flesh.

The jacket was the greatest barrier. His actual substance gave way like layers of cobweb. No wonder he could alight on his servants' backs so easily. He was eyes and bite, and little else. For one callous moment I had to disregard my chivalry and clamber over Lyset to make sure the stake did not slip free as the vampire slid off her and stumbled back.

As more pressure became available I applied it, forcing him across the carpet and into a booth. Finally, as he struck the wall, so too did the tip of the stake. Only then did I release it and step back to see his face in full.

I expected the dregs of a monumental rage, something in line with Wanda's passion, but the creature's visage was almost immediately at peace. His eyes, now without hypnotic power, slowly closed as if nodding off to sleep. Lips closed over fangs, last drops of blood upon them sneaking inside when they should have fallen. My heart was still pounding with exertion, and my limbs burning, but these sensations were all rapturous, for neither would be possible if the vampire had taken any of my blood.

My chivalry was first to recover, so I quickly went back to the bar to right Lyset's glass, which still trickled. At the time I didn't know if her life was saved or not, nor Burton's. Just as I leaned my back on the bar I suffered a hiccup in my recovery, two actually. The first was a jolting twitch from Ruthven in his booth, but it was just his limbs contracting like some sort of dead spider, his little smile contorting into a displeased scowl.

It was likely in response to the second hiccup, which was the door to my right sliding open. In strolled Wanda, mounds of luscious preened fur bouncing on her neck and shoulders, hands burrowed into massive sleeves. Quickly she surveyed the carnage of our first battle for independence.

"Are they-" I started to ask.

"-dead?" She looked at Lyset and Burton each once more, implying that wasn't what she'd investigated initially. "No. Killing them might be a favor. Ridding themselves of his influence will be very difficult." She looked at me and saw I did not approve of the idea. "If not they'll have to be sent away, the further from him the better. As they are tainted by him they could never be disciples of mine now." Our attention shifted to the crumpled creature in the booth, like some cantankerous hollow-leg awaiting his ordered drink.

"I'd never considered," I remarked, "that vampires did not have reflections simply because they moved them somewhere other than the mirrors they faced. He nearly had me with that glass trick."

"But someone had you already," she said in a fashion must sultry, most possessive, hand appearing to run down my chest. It seemed to pull my sweat down with it, and then vanish it along with her fingers retreating into her coat. My breath was even. She moved on to Ruthven. "A reflection is little use to us, as we look outward, at the permanent night. All you Abel-bodied, you children of reflection, are so obsessed with them, as if you might lose yourself moment to moment. If you reflect less, you'll learn more." Her face swung back to mine. "You did splendidly Severin, as I knew you would. This takes care of him for a while."

"Only a while!?" I sputtered. How frequently would I be required to stab someone to death in her service? Monthly? Biweekly? An act of violence to be taken every eight hours like some arthritis palliative?

"A year and a day to be exact," she answered, not a hair on her ruffled. "We will box him up and bury him outside of our town. Then when he rises again you will be there to greet him and send him back to sleep. It is his power. He is weaker in mortal form because death is temporary for him. Isn't that right brother?" The rigid corpse seemed to scowl a little deeper.

"Brother?" I repeated, less shocked than you might think. The thought was fleeting mid-struggle, but something about the way they'd spoken of each other rang with a certain kind of familial familiarity. There certainly was no family resemblance in appearance, just in presence. "When you said you survived Diodati, what you meant was that you were one of the survivors."

"One of seven," she said, looking at me coyly, fully aware that she had withheld the information and still certain she was justified in doing so. "If you were paying attention the way Cain listened to the world serpent you would not be surprised by sibling rivalry running so powerfully in my line." As usual she was correct; it was an obvious conclusion.

"Are you saying your other brothers and sisters will... come calling in our little paradise?"

"At least a few of them," she admitted, "and perhaps all." My Venus in furs brought her body close, pressed it against mine. I felt her heartbeats leaping across the small chasm of air between our breasts. Her vivisecting green eyes grew new plots in their periphery, thorny vines crawling across and testing the edges of the oldest stone well. "But if they want to take our paradise they will not be after deeds or townsfolk or even me. They will be after you, Severin."

"What do you mean?" The shadow of her hand enclosed my heart again, compressing it gently to slow it. At least I assume it did, for I could not bring myself to look down. Exposing my neck to this bloodthirsty creature was every bite as dangerous as exposing it to the vampire.

"I told you my brother was upset that he couldn't reach you first. The reverse-quarantine is but the opportunity, and you are the best means within in. You have an uncommon spirit, obedient but not without personal dignity. You are not a worm.

The more I foster our connection the more adept you will become at acting the conduit between an heir of Cain and her people. Without filtering my will through you my servants would know me only by fear, which does not nourish the ultimate loyalty. To flourish as a god I need the best chief disciple I can get.

And were my siblings to come and take our home, without taking you, alive and willing, they will effectively be burning down the rest of it and starting over. You are now my most precious jewel Severin, and you will grow only more precious with time. I trust you will understand this, and remember my reasoning... when the leash I keep you on gets a little shorter each year."

We both felt the train chug, then slow. The whistle blew its loudest, but not a single creature in that deep snowy wood woke from their long slumber. The real disturbance had not quite arrived yet. Distant clicks as doors opened. Hundreds of feet shuffled out of their cabins, completely unaware of what had transpired. Their biggest concern was getting their bags down from the upper compartments without disturbing the contents.

"And what year is it, my Wanda?" Her mischievous smile captured me, threatened to crush.

"The first year my little Severin. And it will only be the second once we've had an anniversary. Now be quiet, and look out the window, just as you were when I first saw you. I want you blissfully distracted, unaware. I don't want you to know what's coming." Her head dipped, but I obeyed, staring out at the whipping snow.

Her hands moved lower, under, between. But I obeyed. The snow. Faster now? Spurred by her? My Wanda flayed me of my civility, pieces of me or my clothing dropping to the floor. I shuddered, nearly knocked Lyset's glass over again. But I obeyed. The snow. Just white now. Better to look at it than what was below. The heat in the darkness.

Wanda could be trusted to make something of one Severin Molochi, man of eighteen hundred and something or other. She certainly knew how to properly use the dining car, for she comfortably made a meal out of me.

The End

Wanda and Severin will return in

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Quarantine