Once Bitten

Chapter One: Thrill of the Hunt

She was doom in a black cloak. The Forest was her domain tonight, and the school her hunting ground. No one could stop her. She was immortal. The perfect hunter, quiet, deadly, and merciless. Such human failings as pity had been washed away over the centuries, bit by bit, washed away by the blood of the living flowing across her tongue. She was strong. Human muscle and agility were no match for her unnatural strength and speed. She was magical. A wand could not harm her as she became smoke with the flick of an eye and vanished from mortal sight. She was nameless. Once, she had been a girl with a name and a home and a family. Now she was a goddess, terrible and beautiful as the night. Sin incarnate.

She was a vampire, and the time had come for her to take another into the darkness. But first, to feed.

At the edge of the forest she stood, features obscured by the dark, the hood of her cloak, and tricks of the eye. The castle loomed large above, tall, strong, and gleaming. She could feel the raw magic pulsing from it's ancient walls and memories of her human life flitted in and out of her mind. Her humanity was drawn to Hogwarts like a month to the flame. The Beast was drawn to the warm, young, living bodies within. Fresh blood. Rapture. Oh, the hunger was terrible. She had not feasted for days in anticipation of her return to Hogwarts school. Her pure, unadulterated need to drink would make the coppery-sweet taste of life that much more exquisite.

She left the forest.

Entering the castle would pose little threat. She had a tool no other Vampire possessed. A dagger. A dagger she had taken from Salazar Slytherin himself when she drank him dry the night she was changed. The other founders thought he had left in a rage. Indeed, he had been planning on doing just that, even left an unjust letter to Gyffindor. But she and her maker had gotten there first. He was devoured. It was glorious. After, she had gone through his things, looking for the magical weapon she knew him to possess.

The doors to Hogwarts were locked and shut tight. She took the dagger from it's sheath at her hip and pushed it between the doors. They clicked open without protest and she slipped inside.

The halls were silent and oddly alien to her. It had been centuries since she'd last been inside, and the castle had changed in some fundamental way she could not put her finger on. No matter, it was hunting time. She headed downstairs, to the quarters of Slytherin's brood. Poetic justice, or some such romantic nonsense, she thought it - feasting on Slytherin's upon her first return. She had been a Ravenclaw herself, if she remembered correctly.

She did not need to go all the way to the Slytherin common room. Halfway down the hall she heard footsteps and ducked into the shadows. A boy walked by a moment later - more a young mane, really. A tall black boy with slanting eyes. He looked delicious.

He walked by without so much as pausing when he passed her. She slipped out of the shadows and grabbed him by the neck. Turned him around. Smiled. dark eyes went wide and the young man made to scream. She held his neck tight. No air, no voice, would escape it that night. Back into the shadows where she pushed him to the ground and straddled his waist to keep him immobile. His eyes bulged from lack of air. She removed her hand and replaced it with razor-sharp fangs, plunging them deep into the throbbing artery on his smooth neck.

He gasped and tried in vain to push her away, arched his back as much as was possible with her weight pinning him down. His abdomen pressed between her legs and sent a shock of pleasure through her body. She drank deeper from his neck and ground herself against the bulge between his legs. Hormones secreted from her bite caused his body to react and he hardened against her. He grew complacent as his blood drained and his heartbeat slowed. He moaned and she stopped drinking a moment. She put a hand on the bite, no use wasting good blood.

His eyes were half-lidded and his pupil's were huge, whether from the dark or forced arousal, most would not be sure, but the Vampire knew it to be the latter.

"Please..." his pitiful request came out as a sigh and she pressed harder against him, another shock of arousal shooting through her. She kissed his lip, nibbled and licked up the drop of blood that rose out of his lips.

The Vampire ground against the young man harder and faster as she returned to his neck, drinking and moaning. His hands fell limp at his sides and twitched once or twice before his eyes closed. The Vampire climaxed as she drank his last drop. His body convulsed beneath her and he lay still. She wiped a stray drop of his blood from the corner of her mouth and vanished into the shadows of the dungeon.