Muscle and Blood #4
By Merz
Selena and the Slayer

Jason Geller rose from his knees and completed his preparations.  He 
fingered the smooth, hard shaft and smiled in anticipation of feeling 
it penetrate deeply, mercilessly.  She would know exactly what was 
happening but would be helpless to stop him.  Just like all the other 
females he encountered after dark.  Another trophy, another chapter in 
his own legend.  

Jason slipped the hardwood stake into the pocket of his jacket, hung 
the crucifix around his neck and studied his reflection.  He enjoyed 
what he saw: a handsome face, a fit body, the watchful eyes of a 
hunter.  On impulse he took the heavy broadsword from the wall and 
considered bringing his crossbow as well.  No need.  He was hunting a 
female.  Whatever his Watcher believed, this would be just another 
dusting.  It wasn't like he was being sent after some legendary male 
vampire.  He preferred dispatching his adversaries face to face and 
hand to hand.  If this female put up enough struggle to avoid the 
simple stake to the heart, his blade would take her head and that would 
be the end of the affair.  He slipped the sword into a loop inside his 
long leather jacket so it hung straight down below his left armpit, and 
turned toward the door.  As a Vampire Slayer, Jason was enormously 
strong so he could wield the heavy sword like a symphony conductor's 
baton and carry it under his coat as if it were weightless.

"Do be careful, Jason.  We don't want to underestimate this female.  
That missing Slayer, Robin, had been a formidable apprentice and scored 
some impressive victories.  We don't know if he fell while taking on 
this target or some other way, but better safe than sorry."  The old 
man looked up from the dusty book he was studying as Jason reached the 
door.

"Don't worry.  I'm a long way from my apprenticeship, and after all we 
are talking about a female.  Can you show me one example from all your 
books where a female was anything but subservient to her sire, or was 
able to survive long working alone after he was taken down?  You've 
been doing your job, watching her.  In the last week have you seen her 
contact anyone who might be her sire or her protector?"

"Well, no.  But if it's the same one she seems to get along well 
enough, feeding regularly in various parts of the city.  She has taken 
on men as well as women so there might be more than meets the eye."

"All the more reason to put an end to her as soon as possible.  She's 
spreading her filth all across the city.  You said you've seen her with 
two or three different victims each night.  There's no telling how many 
of those poor souls she's planning to take across to the side of the 
undead.  Maybe she's treating them like a big herd that she'll bring 
across all at once and start her own army.  Wouldn't that be a fine 
mess.  Are you suggesting we back off from this one and let the 
slaughter continue?"

"Of course not.  She's a vampire and needs to be exterminated.  I'm 
just advising prudence, but certainly you need to get it over with.  
We'll try to identify her victims and determine if any are too far gone 
and deal with them as best we can.  If possible, could you try to get a 
name from her and some dates to help determine her lineage and 
activities before you finish with her?  You know that we don't have 
many females in our chronicles and we Watchers would like to build a 
complete record on the entire vampire plague going back to Egypt."  He 
waved at a stack of papers on his desk.  "I have nearly completed my 
catalog of all the ones we know of in our region, with most of them 
traced back three generations at least.  That will be invaluable to the 
Watchers League."  

Jason gave a loud sigh to express his exasperation at the old man's 
nervousness, but took a heavy, double edged battle ax from the wall and 
slotted it into the right side of his coat.  Then he slammed out the 
door and went looking for his date of the night.

In a decrepit warehouse his intended victim made her own preparations.  
Dressing for the evening's hunt, Selena concentrated on selecting 
clothes that would let her fit in along the streets and in the 
nightspots she expected to find likely prey.  While she knew all about 
the dangers that could lurk in the night when she hunted, she slipped 
only a with a tiny blade like a needle into a sleeve of her blouse and 
a small folding knife under her wide belt.  The first would make a 
small opening in a vein through which she could feed, but which would 
close cleanly when she had had her fill.  Her victim's memory of the 
event could be swept clean by the power she gained when she consumed 
his living blood.  The second knife's three inch blade was used in rare 
cases of prey putting up enough of a fight to provoke her slitting his 
throat or opening up a fatal wound elsewhere. She considered these 
tools rather than weapons.

The Slayer concentrated his search around the edges of the city's 
theater and restaurant areas.  His Watcher had once spotted the white 
haired vampire among the call girls who plied their trade in the area 
and had even seen her leading both women and men toward some of its 
darkest corners and abandoned storefronts.  Less sharp eyes than 
Jason's would have missed the telltale stain on the shirt cuff of one 
pale male who staggered from the back door of a boarded up shop.  He 
took his position beside the door to await the emergence of his quarry, 
his hardwood stake gripped in his fist.  

When her dim image filled the doorway Jason leaped at the white haired 
witch, driving her back inside and cocking his right arm to plunge the 
stake into her chest.  His left hand groped for her throat.  To his 
astonishment his wrist was caught in an iron grip and steel fingers 
reached toward his own exposed neck.  His attack knocked his target 
several steps backwards into the darkness but she stayed on her feet.  
Jason grabbed her left wrist to prevent her getting a grip on his 
throat after realizing he would gain nothing by choking a member of the 
undead.

His hope of easily overcoming her surprising strength faded abruptly.  
She couldn't match his power, he could tell, even if she far exceeded 
what he expected from any female vampire.  But she was a fighter with a 
variety of tricks and tactics.  As he forced her hand away from this 
throat she leaned in quickly and sank sharp teeth into his wrist.

"Damn you!" he cried as he realized the tide of battle had turned 
abruptly against him.  His strength wasn't so much greater than hers 
that he could drive the stake home with any precision, and the 
sickening crunch he both heard and felt from his wrist told him he was 
in real trouble.

He gave up forcing his stake slowly between her ribs.  Reversing his 
effort to overpower her, he shifted smoothly into a Judo throw that 
broke the hold of her left hand and of her sharp teeth on him and sent 
her spinning to the ground.   He attempted to jump back so he could 
draw a better weapon, but she recovered more quickly than he would have 
believed possible.  With a desperate grab she caught the hem of his 
long coat just as he leaped.  He tripped, landing heavily, and she was 
upon him in an instant.  He exchanged sledge hammer blows and caught 
her with a solid fist to the chin as she bore in, followed by short, 
hard punches to her body that forced her off of him before she could 
again grab for his throat.  With a kick he knocked her back several 
feet so that he could scramble to his feet and prepare his own attack.

That was when he realized his trouble had worsened dramatically.  As 
she flew from the force of his kick, the Slayer saw the vampire pull 
his broadsword from under his coat.  She regained her feet as quickly 
as he did and then offered him the formal salute of a fencer, using his 
heavy, double bladed sword in place of a wire-like epee.  Then she 
dropped into the en garde position.

Keeping his eyes on the center of her body Jason pulled his ax from 
under his right arm.  As he watched the sword point Selena extended 
toward him, hoping for a shift of her gaze or a lapse of attention so 
he could make a move, Jason saw her left hand slip a folding knife from 
under her wide belt and flick it open with her thumb.  His stomach did 
an abrupt somersault as she reversed the knife in her hand and then 
stabbed forcefully at her own crotch.  She couldn't have missed 
stabbing her vagina by more than half an inch before she slashed 
downward, splitting her skirt and giving her legs more freedom to move.  
Vampires don't wear underwear, Jason noted as a final surprise.  

"You act as if you know how to handle a sword, demon.  I haven't 
encountered many who bother to learn to use weapons."  Not letting 
himself get distracted by the pink lower lips or the pale piercing 
eyes, he stepped to his right so see how she would adjust her position.

"We know what we knew when we came over, with perhaps some improvement 
through practice over the centuries.  My brothers fenced and I learned 
the basics.  I found French soldiers who showed me more techniques when 
I went to feed on them, and others along the way since then."  Her feet 
shifted crisply, her balance never wavering as she followed his 
movement.

"Did you have a name, when you were alive?"  He feinted to his left 
with the ax and then stepped quickly to the right.  The sword point 
followed.

"Don't be insulting.  I have the name I was born with, Selena von 
Magdeburg.  It doesn't matter to me if you have heard it or not.  The 
society I was born into was as remote from a commoner like you as the 
society that I have joined since.  Your judgments are of no matter."  
She made a sudden lunge that Jason managed to parry, then she pulled 
back before he could make a counter swing.

Selena wedged her knife handle under her belt and grabbed the front of 
her shirt.  With a jerk she ripped it from her body and right arm, then 
used her teeth to tear it away from her left arm.  "Use this on your 
wrist.  Your blood is distracting and probably is making your grip 
slippery as well."  She tossed the tatters and took a step backward to 
widen the distance between her and Jason so he could tend to his wound.

Jason hurriedly wrapped the rude bandage as tightly around his damaged 
wrist as he could, at the same time trying to determine if her teeth 
had damaged bone or just tendons.  Either way it was beginning to hurt 
worse as well as to stiffen.  Then he returned his attention to Selena 
and gasped in surprise.

Standing nearly naked before him was an alabaster vision of strength 
and beauty.  He had rarely seen such muscular development on a mortal 
female body builder, and never anything like this on a vampire, male or 
female.  The strength he had already experienced in her this evening 
was in full evidence in the rounded shoulders and biceps, tightly 
stacked abdominals and the thick pectorals that supported a pair of 
full breasts thrusting toward him. 

The superhuman strength of a Slayer exceeded that of vampires, 
particularly the typical females.  But this Selena had clearly built up 
a great deal more strength than any female he had heard of, at least 
rivaling a male vampire, and she matched her power with murderous 
aggression.  Even the males usually chose to run from a Slayer, but 
this one was not only standing up to him, she had already hurt him much 
worse than he had done to her.

He leaped forward, swinging the heavy ax at her head.  Mighty arms got 
her sword up to deflect his sally and then she nearly skewered him 
before his catlike reflexes carried him out of danger.  Revising his 
tactics, Jason pulled his leather coat off his right arm and wound it 
several times around his damaged left, providing a measure of 
protection to that side.  Selena made no attempt to interfere with his 
preparation, merely standing at the ready for his next move.

Instead of relying on his pure brute force this time, Jason came in 
swinging the ax one-handed in a blurring butterfly pattern as fast as 
his arm could move.  Selena gave ground slowly, warding off his 
attempts to get past her guard and looking for an opening.  When she 
saw what looked like a gap she lunged in as he had hoped.

Catching the point of the sword on his padded forearm he chopped 
brutally, expecting to sever an arm and leave the demon helpless to 
block his finishing stroke.  Jason was pulled off balance when his ax 
cut only air, and then a solid round shoulder drove in and upward below 
his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs, lifting him and driving 
him crashing into the wall behind him.  He bent across a pure white 
back that seethed with muscle, his ribs aching from the power of 
Selena's shoulder tackle, and then he was aware of a deeper and more 
ominous pain in his side. 

Selena stepped back, one hand on the hilt of her sword and the other on 
the handle of Jason's ax, as if he were still capable of swinging or 
even of raising it.  The Slayer stood on his tiptoes against the wall 
and looked in disbelief at the blade that ran between his ribs and 
stuck into the wall at his back.  His fingers unfolded from the ax and 
Selena accepted it.

"My strength surprised you, didn't it?  As much as my skill?  I've 
worked hard to become strong enough to survive on my own.  You've never 
seen another like me."  She let his gaze drift over her body, 
cataloging once more the powerful arms and shoulders as well as the 
pale pink nipples pointing directly at him in his helplessness.  "Watch 
closely."

Her right biceps bulged as the lifted the ax, both forearms knotted as 
her grip tightened, the thick lats flared as she wound up before 
smashing the flat of the ax against the hilt of the sword.  Jason 
whimpered softly as he felt the point drive an inch deeper into the 
wall.  The vibration sent waves of agony throughout his weakening body, 
and sent more sensuous ripples across the soft white breasts in front 
of him.  Her face remained impassive as she repeated the demonstration 
before dropping the ax and posing before him with her fists on her 
hips.  "I think you like what you see, in spite of the pain."

"I pray that you rot in Hell, along with all of your kind."

"I've been to Hell.  It was called St. Petersburg," she pronounced the 
city with a trace of a central European accent.  "Better than the 
wreckage after Moscow burnt, but still half the year the sun seemed 
never to go down, and during the delicious long nights of winter the 
best people would leave for their dachas in the south.  The nobility 
appreciated the company of a well traveled Prussian ally, and I 
appreciated them in my own way.  But I could rarely go along as a house 
guest because I couldn't count on having the sort of pack that 
concealed my feedings among the better classes.  I had to make do with 

the working masses in the city who weren't nearly so tasty."  

"My God, you really don't have a conscience.  Do you even have any idea 
how many thousands you have killed?"

"Fewer than your imagination might suggest.  I am usually content to 
browse among a crowd rather than always take one to death, or bring 
anyone across to my side.  You may be surprised to know that I've sired 
very few, usually less than one a year.  I take that as a serious 
responsibility."  She stroked her body.  "You do believe I would make a 
good mistress, don't you?"

The Slayer's wound continued to ooze around the sword that nailed him 
to the wall.  Selena's attention became focused on the thin stream that 
gathered on the blade, filled the groove along its side, and began to 
flow along to the hilt.  She cupped a hand beneath the sword hilt and 
let the scarlet stream dribble down to fill it.  When her hand could 
hold no more she smiled at the suffering Slayer and bent to lap at the 
warm liquid.  She licked her hand clean and cupped both hands for a 
refill. 

"Delicious.  Intoxicating.  It's lovely having you inside me this way.  
And I expect you're starting to feel me inside you, my mind swimming 
upstream to yours.  You see how it fills my muscles?  That's just 
appearance.  I don't get stronger until I work them - my strength is 
built just as yours, through exercise."  She emptied and licked her 
hands again.  "Mingling your strength with mine could bring you much 
pleasure."  

A pearly pink was spreading from her midsection across her bare body.  
"Look at this.  Isn't it a thing of beauty?"  She flexed her thick 
right arm and admired the imposing biceps.  She patted its peaked top 
and left red stains from her hand that brought him waves of nausea.  
She straightened and then flexed her arm again.  The suffering Slayer 
fought back a sob when he saw the muscle glow and swell a bit more as 
the new blood Ð his blood Ð reached it.

"Stay out of my mind, demon," Jason gasped.  With a final burst of 
defiance he brandished the crucifix around his neck.  "I command you, 
be gone from my sight and from my thoughts!"

Selena shook her head dismissively.  "It doesn't work if you call on 
your religion after you can already imagine yourself held safely in my 
strong arms, pressing yourself against my body.  You have sent your 
thoughts and desires to me just as I have sent you mine.  Your cross is 
just an object when your very soul yearns to be with me."  She cupped 
another handful of his blood, the flow noticeably slowing.  Jason 
started to settle downward in despair, but as this put more pressure on 
the sword that held him fast he stood upright again.

"I will need to borrow your coat to get home.  I promise to return it 
tomorrow night.  You won't remember any of this, just that you were 
attacked by a monster in the darkness before you knew what was 
happening.  Something unlike any demon you have seen before.  That is 
what happened, isn't it?"

The Slayer could only nod weakly.  Selena removed the torn coat from 
around his damaged left arm.  She couldn't resist a final lick of the 
blood that oozed from under its crude bandage before wrapping the coat 
around her powerful body.  "I don't need this.  I believe you can still 
make it work to summon help?  You have someone who will help you?"  She 
took the cell phone from the coat pocket and placed it in Jason's good 
hand, then faded into the darkness as Jason struggled to dial with one 
hand.


*     *     *  

"If you wanted to work this hard, I wish you hadn't waited until an 
hour before dawn to find me.  You know I'll have to sleep over now?  We 
only have a few minutes more."

"Have you fed on a Slayer, Soong?"  Selena admired the swelling of her 
arms as they curled an enormous barbell.

"Oh yeah.  That shit burns like hundred proof used to.  Mine was a 
Russian dusting his way down through Siberia and Mongolia.  He had the 
quaint idea a cross could keep us from getting him even though he was 
an avowed atheist.  That's what you're working off?  You took one of 
them down?"  The Korean vampire was practicing martial arts in the 
unlighted warehouse Selena used as her home base. 

"Look at my muscles again.  I've never fed so richly or so well.  I was 
halfway done for the night when the Slayer gave himself to me.  I took 
only a pound or two, but I'm going back for more.  He will be mine."  
Selena set her massive weight on the floor and admired the surging 
strength in her arms.

"I don't think you should try that.  I hit the road after taking mine, 
and nearly starved among the Buddhists who do believe in their religion 
so I couldn't get close.  I heard their Watchers can exorcise your 
influence and maybe even recover the memory of your feeding.  If they 
get to know you, they won't stop hunting you.  That is not safe prey, 
sister."

"That was the last indulgence.  His Watcher got him to hospital.  He'll 
heal quickly like Slayers always do.  But then I got the Watcher when 
he left the building to fetch back whatever books and baubles he needed 
to reclaim the Slayer's soul.  He showed me the den they shared, and 
then he set it on fire before he lost the last blood I hadn't already 
taken from him.  He thought I could read English so he died to keep his 
books and papers out of my hands.  The Slayer is mine for as long as I 
want him to last."