Free Vintage Soul by David Niall Wilson

her head seductively, she put one hand on her hip and leaned on it just enough that her gown slit to show the full length of one slender leg.
    â€œAre you sure there isn’t some other arrangement we could come to?” she asked.   She tried to give her voice a coy lilt, but was afraid it came out too high pitched and a little shrill.
    The man smiled and took another step toward her.   “Interesting,” he said.   “I suppose you have something in mind?”
    Vanessa coiled and sprang with all the preternatural speed and strength the centuries had granted her.   The chain trailed behind her like the tail of a kite, and though heavy, it did not appear to slow her attack.   The man backpedaled and nearly lost his balance.   Vanessa flew headlong, hands extended like talons.   She gripped the edge of his robe, just as she hit the end of the chain and it drew her up short with a horrible snap of bone.   Her right wrist shattered, but she clung to him with her left.   Crying out in rage she dragged that robe toward her, but he was seconds too quick.   With a gasp, he spoke, and the word hovered between them.
    A clattering sound filled the room, and Vanessa was jerked backward.   Her captor’s robe tore, and she held that bit of cloth in her hand, but the chains retracted into the wall, slowly and relentlessly.   Vanessa gritted her teeth against the pain and drove forward, fighting her bonds.   It was no use.   She slid back, step after inexorable step and the man, back on his feet and with his composure regained, followed her.   He kept just out of reach and smirked as she snarled and scratched the air, trying to reach him.
    Within moments the chains had drawn tight.   Vanessa was pinned flat against the wall, her wrists out to her sides and her ankles immobile, slightly spread.   She fought, but she could barely twist her wrists in the charmed manacles, and the one was only partially healed.   It would be hours before it mended properly.   The force drawing the chains back into the wall was impossibly strong.   The man had continued his slow, deliberate pursuit, and now that she was held helplessly to the stone, he stepped closer still.   He was careful to keep his throat out of the possible range of her fangs, but he pressed his leg between hers and rested his chest against the material of her gown so her nipples brushed the rough fabric of his jacket.
    â€œVery good,” he said.   “You are faster than I expected, much faster – and stronger.   I have done even better than I’d hoped.”
    Vanessa didn’t reply.   She continued to struggle.   She tried desperately to pull away from him and at the same time ground the already tortured bones of her wrists and ankles against her bonds.   She gritted her teeth against it the pain, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing how great it was.  
    â€œYou can smell it, can’t you?” he asked, turning his head to the side so that the pulsing vein in his neck was in clear view.   “I know you can – probably smelled me the moment I entered the room, didn’t you?”
    He pressed closer, and Vanessa began to panic.   His voice droned on, but she only caught the words between the thunderous, crashing beats of his heart.   She’d been this close to many throats, fed many times, though not to the death – not in three hundred years.   This was like nothing she’d ever experienced.   His pulse blanked thought, and the heady, powerful scent of his blood – the taste of it, even through his skin, maddened her.
    Her gums retracted to show long, pearl-white fangs.   Her jaws worked convulsively, trying to latch on and drive those fangs home and drain that sweet, hot blood.   She felt him brush a hand through her hair and lunged, like a wild beast, toward his wrist, but he was far too quick now, and her