Authors Note: Reader beware for within lies vampires. Not just any vampire though, methuselah. These are noble vampires of pure, or nearly pure, blood lineage. There is sex, as well as death, and if the reader should find this to be difficult to take in I urge you to seek pleasure elsewhere.
For others I will reiterate. People will die in this story. You may like them, but they will die nonetheless. The world of methuselah is a dangerous one to live in. There is also a touch of necrophilia here, although nothing scandalous. I simply state this because the bodies are still warm.
You may also note the sheep like attitude these people take towards being eaten alive. This state of affairs is a long one, and the vampires have become very civil in it. I believe that if such ruled us today this would be the way things would be. Of course this is another world, and in a different time.
Finally this chapter has no eroticism in it. This serves as a introduction into the world for the reader. However future chapters will feature a great deal of erotic deeds. I hope you will look forward to them.
Chapter I, The Selected
If they fear us, they will run from us.
If they hate us, they will kill us.
If they loves us, they will give us everything.
Even that which we would take.
-Duke Yuriza, Methuselah
Ruler of the Northern Baronies.
30 years before the taming.
Karissa Level approached the mansion that stood above her town. The house was home to the town's lord, and master, Baron Ewan Secrest. The baron wasn't your average man. For one he'd lived for almost three hundred years and still looked young. He was a vampire, and now Karissa had become his prey.
She remembered the town assembly that she'd been selected from. It had been filled with somber eyed parents and young women, all waiting for a portly old man to call out a name. Ewan, like most vampires, only preyed on the most beautiful of the humans he ruled. In exchange for taking one girl a month he provided the town protection, and posterity. Karissa had almost escaped for the baron only selected women between the ages of 18 and 24. She'd just had her 23rd birthday, and she already had a man she fancied. The young woman had never asked him how he felt about her. Now she would most likely never know.
Working for a vampire wasn't always a death sentence, but it wasn't something you got out of easily either. Over half the girls selected would eventually be the vampires food, fed upon while pleasuring their master. Those that didn't get killed were sometimes turned into vampires themselves, or promoted to maidens of the house whose skills at management were indispensable. Very few actually left the job although those that did were rewarded very highly for their service.
There was one bright spot though. In exchange for taking her family's daughter away from her all other siblings she had, of which she had two, would be spared from being selected. Also a small fortune would be granted to her family to make up for the loss. The vampire lords didn't treat the humans that served them as slaves, but simply had to rely on them as a food source. It was a state of affairs that had lasted for many centuries, and would likely continue on even longer.
Karissa Level, as stated earlier, was 23. She had long blonde hair plaited into two rings that reached a bit past her shoulders, and held together by a series of white ribbons. She wore a simple blue spring dress, and a pair of her best dancing shoes. She had been instructed to wear only her best to the mansion before she took up her post as a maid. That was the job most of the women received so the master could gaze on their beauty as much as a he pleased.