In the corner of the dark cellar, a rat scurried into a small gap in the wall. It had sensed something unnatural, and generations of its ancestors had imprinted their fear of that particular noise into its DNA.

From a stone coffin in the centre of a small crypt off to the side of the main hall, a pulse had started beating. It was a strong pulse that every living creature in that hall instinctively felt. Beating slowly, perhaps one beat per minute, it indicated that soon the stone would move, and a cold pale skinned human, but not human, would emerge.

Rats were its natural nibble until it spread its wings and went in search of larger prey. There were times it would return to the chamber clutching a barely conscious human its arms. Other times it would simply return with fresh blood dripping from its mouth, and then sleep again until the hunger woke it again.

Of course, Amara didn't use the pronoun it. She heard the rat’s thoughts, and knew it had scurried into the wall, and if she’d been alive she might have found the rat’s thoughts amusing or quaint.
As it was, she was as dead to emotion as her barely alive body. It had been too long since she’d become a vampire, perhaps 400 years had passed. She was still hunting after all these years by avoiding her brethren and not attracting human attention.

The covenant was 50 miles away, and easy to get to when she needed company, though her cravings were generally for a different type of company. Human company. In particular, female human company. Alas, most of her conquests were terrified of her, and rarely lasted very long.

Opening her eyes, Amara savoured the darkness of her coffin, allowing her eyes to adjust as her pupils focused on the text carved into the inside of the stone lid. It wasn't poetry, nor did it require any particular mental acuity to read.

Stated simply in a careful hand-carved style dating from the 1600s, it read, “I am Amara. I am born to hunt.”

---

Casting no shadow in the moonlight, Amara allowed the wind to caress her as she gazed without thought or emotion into the streets below. Her world was of rooftops, where her prey never looked even though they might have seen her if they had.

Amara remembered her own living hell, of a shadowy creature that had watched her late one night after ministering to her mistress’ and then taking a walk in the garden of that stately home. She’d worked long hard days and her all too brief sojourns before bed were her only respite from a life of toil.

To be sure, she wore pretty dresses, she attended society functions, but it was always understood that she was a servant, and earned her keep amusing her mistress. Reading books to her, combing her hair, and ensuring her comfort was never wanting.

That night, a creature she knew only from myths had descended as Amara looked at the stars. Its shape blurring until almost the last moment, and then in the instant it attacked she’d clearly seen its profile.

It was as pale as a corpse, with blood red lips and dark eyes, long flowing hair, and not a hint of friendliness. With its mind alone, it had held Amara transfixed, and in a croaky ancient voice had whispered words of hate, explaining exactly what Amara meant to it.

She was nothing, not worthy of even the tiniest ounce of respect. She was simply a source of food, and he was about to suck every drop of her precious blood from her pretty body, and leave her dead on the ground. A limp caricature of the beautiful woman she’d been.

Amara remembered that moment as if it were just yesterday. She remembered thinking that finally, escape from her toil was at hand. She remembered thinking how she wanted to hunt and feed, just like this creature. And she remembered hating this creature like she had never hated before.

She remembered his bite, the pain, the growing numbness in her body. She remembered how much that bite thrilled her, that the pain released her from his spell, she remembered being horny in that moment. She didn’t remember reaching, or her hand closing around the stake it found.  Nor did she remember plunging it deep into his heart.

But she did remember seeing him disintegrate and tasting her own blood as she licked her hands clean. She did remember the powerful orgasm she’d had, and that the taste of her blood thrilled her, and she remembered the desire for her mistress, with the tables turned for a change.

---

Seeing beyond her thoughts, Amara watched a young woman walking in the streets below. If she’d had any feelings of her own, her heart might have caught in her chest. The woman could have been her mistress, brought to life again all these hundreds of years later.

Coldly watching her walk, a long forgotten feeling of lust crept into Amara’s consciousness. Could it be that after all this time her mistress had returned?

Recalling that final night with the woman who’d held her in thrall for so many years, Amara shuddered. It had been too long since she’d allowed that memory to surface. She’d returned to the manor house feeling stronger than she’d ever felt in her life, knowing that from that moment she’d be her mistress’ equal.

Entering her mistress’ bedroom, Amara had stood quietly watching her from the end of the bed. Her mistress had not woken, and for many minutes Amara simply observed the regular beat of her mistress’ heart. Slowly her chest rose and fell, her nostrils imperceptibly flaring, her eyelids as calm as a baby asleep.

Feeling her own pulse quicken, Amara padded around to her mistress’ side, and gently running her hand over her mistress’ cheek, she’d lightly caressed her into a slumbering alertness. Her mistress had moaned gently, and unconsciously brought her hand to cover Amara’s.

She’d probably thought she was in a dream, but Amara’s kiss on her lips brought her to a state of drowsy wakefulness.

“Shhh, my love,” had said Amara, “it’s me. I want you and it cannot wait.”

Her mistress’ eyes focused, and for the first time perceived Amara not as her servant, but as her lover. Pupils dilating, she’d pulled Amara close, their lips brushing, and then with more force, had parted and their tongues had probed gently.

Amara’s mistress sensing their relationship had changed allowed Amara to take the lead, bending to Amara’s will. For many hours her mistress’ teased and pleasured Amara, never once complaining nor seeking to exert control.

The end was as dramatic as had been the attack in the garden. Climaxing, Amara had unthinkingly bitten hard her mistress’ neck, and with a strength she hadn’t known she’d possessed, had crushed the air from her mistress and stabbed deep into her skin with sharpened talons.

The climax hadn’t ended till every drop of her mistress’ blood was consumed. From her quenched state, Amara slowly understood that her mistress was no longer with her. Amara’s wails penetrated the hearing of every sleeping soul in the manor.

In devastating anguish, Amara became aware of shouts and banging on the door to her mistress’ chamber. Within moments the door would yield, and Amara had felt a new discovery come over her. Heightened senses heard every beating heart, smelled every odour.

An instinct never before experienced propelled Amara to the window, wings spreading, muscles relaxing. In moments Amara had been soaring above the manor, just as the first of the men had broken through the door.

From the window had come gasps and cries about witchcraft, her name echoing in the wind behind her. From that moment, Amara had been hunted, nearly caught, and learned to kill. It was many years before her name ceased to be talked of, and many more before the legend of Amara the witch lost its element of fear.

Little had those villagers known, Amara had been no vampire until that very night. Of course, Amara had fled the area in distress, desperately seeking her own death. Alas, the vampire lives long. Hunting elsewhere, the connection between the death of her mistress and the dark hunter of southern England was never made.

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